


Small Songs of Ice and Fire

by jeeno2



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotp, Canon Compliant, Crack, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Future Fic, Kissing, Marriage, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Pregnancy, Sister-Sister Relationship, TWOW spoilers, Tumblr Prompt, Voyeurism, Weddings, Wolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-25 15:03:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 95
Words: 33,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short ficlets written for various prompts, primarily centered around the sisters Stark.  Multiple pairings and ratings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prom (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated T. Written in response to a gameofships challenges prompt on tumblr.

It wasn’t until more than three years later, Arya resting her head in Gendry’s lap inside his beat-up pickup truck parked by the school gymnasium, in her blue strapless dress that matched his eyes, her bare arms covered in gooseflesh despite the relative warmth of the May evening, that Gendry kissed her.

One moment they’d been talking and laughing together.  Making fun of Westeros High’s assistant principal who they agreed must have looked seventy years old even when he was a teenager himself.  Laughing at the bitchy cunts from the Casterly Rock subdivision south of town, with their dresses from The Magnificant Mile that must have cost two thousand dollars, their dyed blonde hair, and their plastic smiles.

And then the next moment they weren’t talking at all.  Gendry looked nervously at the dashboard and fidgeted with his hands, starting to blush a little.  And then he swallowed hard and looked directly into her eyes.

The look she saw there caused her heart to stutter in her chest.

He drew his bottom lip between his bottom teeth, then, not dropping her gaze.  And he gently cradled the back of her head in his strong hands.

“Arya…” he breathed, almost inaudibly.  He grinned at her, looking nervous and not a little feverish. 

She had no experience in this sort of thing but she was fairly certain she knew what came next.

And she had no intention of fighting it.

She instinctively wound her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her at the same time he leaned forward and gently pressed his lips to hers.

It was a slow kiss, and very tentative.  Arya knew that Gendry knew how to do this – he was a lot older than her, for one thing, and he’d had a few girlfriends since he graduated from Westeros High.  Even so, he didn’t rush the kiss.  He moved one of his arms from the back of her head and began slowly running it up and down her side, making her shiver, and gently traced her bottom lip with his tongue.  But he didn’t push, and even when she opened her mouth a little for him he kept himself in check, as if he were handling a delicate object that might shatter into pieces at the slightest wrong movement.

Despite the sluggish pace Gendry was setting – or perhaps because of it – Arya’s heart felt like it was about to beat right out of her chest.

At length he took his lips away from hers and touched them gently to her chin.  He pressed slow, lazy kisses along her jaw it until he reached her ear.

“Are you sure you want this?” he whispered into her ear.  His breath tickled the small wispy hairs on the back of her neck, making her shudder.

“Wh-what do you mean?”  

He pulled away from her ear and looked her in the eye again.  He began caressing her hair, causing some of it to tumble out of the carefully arranged knot Sansa had piled on top of her head earlier tonight.  But Arya didn’t care about that.  “I mean… you know what I am, Arya.  I’m not going to college.  I can’t afford it.  And I don’t have much money….”  

_Ah._

“God _damn_ it Gendry,” she interrupted.  “None of that means jack  _shit_  to me.  And it never has,” she’d said emphatically. She punched his shoulder for emphasis, hard, and she could tell he was fighting a smile at her action.  “I like you because of who you  _are_.  I couldn’t care less about who you aren’t _._ ”  She huffed in frustration.   “I asked you to take me to prom because, yes.  I want this.  I want  _you_.”

When an awkward silence fell between them after her speech, Arya decided to take a chance. 

His eyes were still downcast, but Arya licked her lips and steeled her nerves. She’d never done this before, but that didn’t matter.  Not with Gendry.  She took the initiative this time and roughly pulled him down to her, and pressed her lips to his, mimicking what he’d done just a moment before.

If Gendry was shocked by her initiative he recovered very quickly.  He began kissing her back almost immediately, in earnest this time, wrapping his arms around her small frame and pulling her close.  His body was radiating heat, and it matched the fire pumping through her veins.

She thought, fleetingly, that this was a hell of a lot more fun than she expected prom to be.


	2. Avoiding the Dawn (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated M. Written in response to a gameofships hump day prompt on tumblr.

He’ll have to leave her again on the morrow.  

He doesn’t want to.  She can see that on his face as plainly as if he had written it there with ink and quill.

But he has no choice.  The raven came a fortnight ago from the Dragon Queen and his instructions were very clear.  

And so even though Jon hasn’t set foot north of the Wall since the Queen relieved him of his duties as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, tomorrow Sansa will be loading her husband up with furs and blankets and all the dried food he can carry and sending him off to a future that’s uncertain at best.

When Jon takes her in their narrow bed tonight, he isn’t gentle the way he normally is.  He wastes no time in possessing her, body and soul.  As if he suspects, as she does, that this may not only be their last night together for a while, but rather their last night together, ever.

He wastes no time with her, entering her in one powerful thrust, making her cry out.  He clasps both of her hands in his, pulling them up and above their heads.  The force of his thrusting, of his possession, drives every thought from her head except for _Jon_ , every possible feeling except for  _him._  

Her body shaking, Sansa manages to turn her hands a little and entertwine their fingers.  She squeezes his hands as tightly as she can as they move together, trying to communicate _mine, ours, us_ through the simple gesture.  

Even though she’s used no words he seems to understand her meaning well enough, and he squeezes back, muffling a sob into her shoulder.


	3. Only Water (Sam x Gilly)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated M. Written in response to a gameofships hump day prompt on LJ

She’s never known this kind of tenderness before.   Never known there could _be_ this kind of tenderness, before.

As Sam moves inside her slowly, tentatively, she looks up at him and sees tears forming in the corners of his eyes.  This man – this warrior who doesn’t believe in his own strength, _wouldn’t_ believe in it even if she told him he was strong and brave and righteous day after day after day for the rest of their lives – is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, inside of her and surrounding her like this. 

The sight of his tears breaks something inside her and she lifts his face up to crush his mouth down to hers.

“We can’t –“ he tells her brokenly, his words a little slurred from all that rum they shared tonight.  He doesn’t stop the movements of his body – he speeds up a little, in fact – but the look on his face is one of indecision and agony rather than pleasure.

Gilly grips his face in both hands by way of wordless response and begins to match his thrusts with movements of her own.  “We _can_ ,” she corrects him, forcefully.  She pushes his face down to her breasts and he moans throatily.  Indecision apparently gone, he eagerly laps at them with tongue and teeth, coaxing milk from her as she feels a dizziness overtake her that has nothing to do with her own mild intoxication.

* * *

 

The steady rocking of the ship underneath them lulls them to sleep soon afterwards.  

But they wake in the night, multiple times, a bit disoriented and still a little drunk.

The second time she wakes in his arms, she’s surprised to discover he’s still inside of her.   She rolls on top of him and squeezes him gently, careful not to wake him.

She begins to move over him, trying to memorize all the lines of his face, trying desperately not to think of what it would be like to be his lady in a big fancy castle in the southron lands.  She’d give him sons – lots of strong, Tarly boys, she _knows_ it, in a land where a mother need not be afraid of bearing sons– who’d all grow up to be brave, strong men just like their father.  

She chokes on an involuntary sob as she feels him beginning to harden inside her and his eyes flutter open.

“Gilly… what….” he begins, confused at first as to what’s happening.  But then she rises up on and sinks back down, her lips pressed into a determined line. 

His eyes roll back into his head as his fingertips dig into her hips.


	4. Saying Goodbye (Jon x Sansa)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rated barely-M. Written in response to a gameofships hump day prompt on tumblr.

Sansa decides to surprise him.

She lies in wait in the warm thermal pool just outside the castle, wearing nothing at all, her long red hair unbraided and down her back. Just the way Jon likes it. The air outside is bone-chilling, and so she treads water to keep the parts of her that aren’t fully submerged in the water warm.

At length Jon comes to her. He’s wearing the heavy furs and woolens that will protect him against the harsh elements he’ll face on his long journey north. The look on his face is one of a doomed man; a man with no hope and no future. It breaks Sansa’s heart.

Refusing to give in to those feelings herself, and not trusting her voice to remain steady at the moment, Sansa splashes around loudly to attract his attention.

He’s standing a good fifty feet away from her, but it works. Jon’s eyes snap to hers, and then widen in shock, as if he can’t quite believe that what he’s seeing isn’t just an elaborate mirage.

He stands rooted to the spot, though, and that’s not at all what Sansa had in mind when she planned this.

"Come here, Jon," she tells him, willing herself to sound strong, forcing herself to sound calmer than she feels, as if she isn’t about to fall to pieces at the very thought of him leaving her.

He obeys wordlessly, setting down his heavy pack and walking slowly towards the pool and towards her.

He kneels down on the icy ground so that their eyes are level.

"Hi," he says quietly. His voice sounds almost shy, which is a bit ridiculous in light of everything they’ve done to each other over the past two months.

But it doesn’t matter. Sansa stands on her tiptoes, ignoring the frigid air as it comes into contact with her bare wet skin, and presses her lips to his.

He kisses her back tenderly, eagerly. His eyes flit down to where her bare breasts are exposed, but they don’t linger. He closes his eyes and awkwardly pulls her to him.

"Something to remember me by," she says against his lips. "Until you come home."


	5. Wedding day (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a three-sentences-fic prompt on tumblr: "Gendrya, an alive Ned Stark is there for their wedding." (Rated T)

Her eyes are dry as her lord father walks her to the front of the great sept in Kings Landing, one delicate hand on his steady arm.

Lord Stark’s eyes, however, are glistening with unshed tears as the young stag replaces her cloak bearing the sigil of her ancestors with one made of black and gold.

"My lady," Gendry Baratheon says tenderly, and Arya smiles against her new husband’s lips as he kisses her.


	6. Prom (Cersei x Jaime)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three sentence fic from a tumblr prompt: "Cersei and Jaime at their high school prom." (Rated T)

Cersei can feel the eyes of every bitch in Westeros High boring into her as she enters the decorated school gym wearing a dress her mother had imported from Paris, arm in arm with her brother Jaime.

"They hate us," she says to him as he hands her a glass of punch, trying to channel her misery at being an outcast here into anger, into spite.

"No," Jaime corrects her, taking her out onto the dance floor and pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek; "they’re just jealous of your perfect hair."


	7. Prom II (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a three sentence fic prompt on tumblr: "Arya and Gendry to go prom." (Rated K)

She feels like a total idiot, wearing an old dress Sansa wore two years ago that their mother altered last week to fit her tiny frame.

"He’s going to love you in this," Sansa gushes, as she arranges the stupid straps that keep slipping off Arya’s narrow shoulders and smooths back a tendril of hair that escaped its complicated braid.

… and to Sansa’s credit, Gendry’s eyes do widen perceptibly when her father opens the door and he ses her standing there in this getup, waiting for him; she’ll never admit it, but in that moment Arya is grateful for an older sister who knows about stuff like this.


	8. Phantom Limb (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the AxGweek tumblr's April prompt, "Evidence"

Gendry never stopped looking for her.

Not when Thoros told him he could no longer see her in his flames.  Not even when Dondarrion took him aside and told him, as gently as he could, that all evidence suggested Arya had been murdered with the rest of her family at the Frey wedding.

Arya was still alive.  She had to be.  She was still out there, somewhere.  

Because Gendry would  _know_  it if she were dead.  

A part of him he didn’t even know he had until she left ached terribly, day and night.   _As long as the pain remains, it’s proof she’s still alive_ , Gendry would tell himself as he tried to sleep, his bedroll colder now than it ever had been when Arya was still with their company.

(He sometimes wondered if she had someone new to keep her warm at night, wherever she was.  But he always hated himself for it a moment later, knowing he hadn’t the right.)

* * *

 

Years later, when he was finally her lord husband and she his lady, and they were warm together in their bed at Winterfell, he told her that he always knew he’d find her again.

"How did you know that?" she asked him.  Just as she always did when they had this conversation.  Because those were the years when she was lost even to herself.

Her head rested lightly on his chest and wisps of her soft brown hair tickled his nose as she talked.  But he only shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

"I had proof," he told her knowingly.  He rolled over a little and kissed her forehead.  "And a hell of a lot of faith," he added, kissing the tip of her nose.  Each cheek.  

"And?" Arya asked him, prompting.  She knew how the rest of this went; but she liked to hear him say it anyway.

"And… there just wasn’t any other option but to find you," he admitted quietly, pulling her to him in gratitude once more.


	9. Introductions (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a tumblr prompt: "Modern Arya x Gendry? Gendry is introduced to the Starks as Arya's new boyfriend (namely her elder brothers....)"

He had her backed up against the wall of the house, his hands on either side of her head, their faces just inches apart.  

"Well?" Arya asked him, one eyebrow raised.  He could feel the warm puff of her breath against his lips as she spoke.  Her voice trembled just a little, belying the cool and collected image she always tried to portray around him.  "Now what?"

Gendry decided it would be best if he showed her.

This kiss was unlike any of the others they’d shared during their short time together.  It wasn’t a stolen kiss, or a kiss born out of desperate need.  He set a leisurely pace, moving his hands so they gently cradled her face, teasing her bottom lip with his tongue.  And she followed his lead, sighing quietly into his mouth and wrapping her arms delicately around his neck.

Gendry was just about to suggest that perhaps they could take a moonlit walk to his cabin when a sharp bark of male laughter — and then another one — interrupted their quiet moment.

Gendry jumped away from Arya like she was something toxic, which only made their intruders laugh harder.

He turned around very slowly.  And his stomach sank when he saw Arya’s entire family standing not five feet away from them, apparently home early from their trip to the lake.

Gendry wondered, very briefly, if it were possible for the Earth to open up and swallow a man whole if he wished for it hard enough.

"What’s going on here?" Arya’s father, Ned Stark, demanded.

A guy about Gendry’s age — one of the laughers; Robb, he thought his name was — responded after his laughter finally subsided:  ”Dad, this is Gendry.  Arya’s new  _boyfriend_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you would like to send me a prompt, I'm jeeno2 on tumblr :)


	10. Reunion (Arya and Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a three-sentence-fic tumblr prompt: "Arya and Sansa reunited"

Arya is no longer the girl she was when they were last together at Winterfell.

She ducks her head instead of looking Sansa in the eye when her older sister finally arrives from the Vale, ashamed of who she was and what she’d become during her time across the Narrow Sea.  No one.  Faceless.  A mummer who lured men to their deaths 

But Sansa will have none of that.  “I’ve scars too, you know,” she whispers hoarsely without elaboration.  And she clutches Arya to her, vowing fervently that they’ll never be parted again.


	11. Freedom (Oberyn Martell x Lyanna Stark)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an Anon tumblr prompt, asking for a drabble involving Oberyn/Lyanna

It took less than ten minutes for Lyanna Stark to wreck all the careful plans her family had set for her. And just another hour for her to throw all that was left of her formerly orderly life into utter chaos.

But as the young Prince of Dorne lay his hands on her body — his dark skin hot and smooth against the pale expanse of her breast — she cried out ecstatically anyway, flush with pleasure and half-drunk on the first real freedom she’d ever known.


	12. Lost (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a three-sentence-fic tumblr prompt: "Arya x Gendry, lost and bickering over a map"

The scrap of parchment they’ve been relying upon for direction ever since escaping Harrenhal is filthy and tattered, with no clear difference anymore between river and road or between north and south.

When they cross the same stream for the fourth time in two days Gendry tells Arya, flatly, that they’re lost — a point that Arya, in her endearing, steely-eyed stubbornness, refuses to concede; as though admitting something like that out loud would be akin to admitting defeat.

As Arya shouts and swears at him, pointing at a rock fifty yards away and then jabbing her finger in frustration at an illegible smudge on their map, Gendry realizes, suddenly, and to his shame, that he doesn’t honestly mind being hopelessly lost — the people who want them dead be damned — so long as he’s with her.


	13. Promise (Ned and Lyanna Stark)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an Anon tumblr prompt: "Something with Lyanna and Ned"

The light is fading quickly in the small, cloistered room that has served as a kind of crypt for her this past fortnight.  

Her babe begins to cry — and with such force! oh gods, his healthy lungs! — when at last Eddard takes him from her breast.

"Please," Lyanna begs her brother tearfully, in this room that is at once too hot and icy cold.  She tries to raise her arms — to touch the boy one last time; but her strength fails her and her arms fall limply to her sides.

"Promise me, Ned, that you will keep him safe.   _Promise me._ ”

Ned smiles sadly and leans over her, kissing her forehead tenderly as the lights go out.


	14. New Neighbors (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a Reader's prompt: "Modern day Gendrya -- the Starks are moving in next door and Gendry can't help but notice Arya."

Gendry is scrubbing down his foster mom’s grill with soap and a course wire brush when the new girl from next door walks out of her house, barefoot, and carefully steps onto her family’s tiled back patio.

He’s not in the habit of spying on neighbors over backyard fences.  He isn’t a  _perv_  or anything.  But something about this girl has captured his attention.  Gendry’s been thinking about her, off and on, from the moment her family arrived yesterday morning and he caught a quick glimpse of her from his living room, her arms full with a moving box that was easily twice her size and probably weighed more than she does.

Now that he’s seeing her again, all by herself — not flanked by older brothers, not half-hidden by a gigantic box — Gendry finds himself unable to look away.

Maybe it’s the way she carries herself.  She’s a small girl.  Very small, in fact.  But there’s a boldness to her that Gendry never sees in girls from this neighborhood.  As he watches her she sits down on a lawn chair in the center of a sea of moving boxes, tucking the ends of her loose brown hair behind her ears with impatient hands.  She tucks her legs underneath her body.

And then she looks up, suddenly, and directly at Gendry.

"Hey," she says abruptly.  She hurls the single word from her side of the fence to his, and he drops his filthy scrub brush in surprise.

"Um," he says, like an idiot, as he scrambles to pick it up.  "Hey."

She smirks at him then, her silver eyes flashing with amusement.  He cringes inwardly.   _She’s going to tell me I’m creepy stalker_.  

"I’m Arya," she says instead.

"Um.  Hey," he says again, stupidly.  He clears his throat and silently begs his brain to get its shit together.  "I’m… Um. I’m Gendry."  

She’s still smiling.  ”Hi Gendry,” she says, the look on her face inscrutable.  ”It’s nice to finally meet you.”


	15. Breathless (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the anonymous tumblr prompt: "Breathless, Arya x Gendry." This will eventually become a one-shot, but I'm not certain when that will happen.

When she climbs inside Gendry’s tent the first time, barely visible to him in the darkness, he isn’t entirely certain he’s not in the middle of some elaborate dream.

"I had a nightmare," Arya tells him matter-of-factly as she lies down next to him on his bedroll.  As if there’s nothing else to say.  As if those four little words explain everything.

When Gendry dreams of Arya Stark she never speaks.  Neither of them do.  And so her words, though cryptic, are enough to convince him that this is real.  Even if she’s only ever come to him in the night like this in his dreams.

He has so many things he wants to ask her.  But she makes it clear right away that she’s only here for sleep.  She rolls over onto her side without another word, her back facing him, less than an inch of space separating their prone bodies.  

The warmth from her small body radiates off her in waves, and it fills him with such breathless desire that he digs his fingernails into his palms to remember himself.


	16. Music Festival (Arya x Gendry, Theon x Jeyne)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an Anon tumblr prompt: "Coachella (or any music festival), Arya x Gendry."

It’s past midnight, and Gendry is already half asleep when the band from Chicago finally takes the stage.  The group that Arya’s been talking about for weeks now, and the impetus for their road trip down to the Southern California desert in the first place.

Arya quickly squirms out of her sleeping bag and leaps to her feet.  Her silver eyes are alight with excitement, and the straps of her too-large tank top have slipped a little off her shoulders.  It exposes the tan lines she’s earned the past few days and Gendry averts his eyes, hoping he’s not blushing.

"C’mon!" she squeals when the scratchy-voiced vocalist starts testing the mike.  Gendry glances over at their friends Theon and Jeyne, spooned around each other inside their shared sleeping bag.  If either of them heard either the band take the stage or Arya’s excitement they show no outward sign of it.  

Gendry sighs and shakes his head a little as he climbs out of his own sleeping bag and then pokes his way out of their four-person tent.

He sees right away that Arya didn’t wait for him.  She’s already right in front of the stage, a tiny speck of a person floating among the throngs of other fans who’ve driven hundreds of miles to hear these guys play live in the middle of the night.

But Gendry didn’t come all this way to hang out with a sleeping Theon and Jeyne, or to watch from a distance as Arya finds some other guy to dance with.  He slowly makes his way through the crowd, grateful — and not for the first time — that he’s taller and quite a bit larger than most of the kids at Coachella.  Arya’s gotten a head start on him but he closes the distance quickly, ignoring the angry shouts of “hey  _watch_  it!” and “fuck off!” thrown at him as he pushes through.

"Hey!" Arya says happily when he finally reaches her.  "Can I get a boost?"

"Oh," he says, looking down at her.  It hadn’t occurred to him that she might have trouble seeing the band; but she  _is_  short.  The thought of holding Arya the way he’s seen other guys hold their girlfriends here causes his heart to stutter a little in his chest.  ”Yeah, of course.”

Without another word, Arya walks up behind him and jumps on his back, gently wrapping her arms and legs around his body as he gives her a boost and holds tightly on to her legs.

Once settled, Arya murmurs, very quietly, into his ear, “Thank you, Gendry.”  She kisses his cheek and lets her lips linger, smiling against his skin.

Gendry knows this band is supposed to be good.  They won a Grammy — or maybe it was an Emmy? — last year.  But the feeling of Arya’s small body wrapped around his is all he can focus on and he doesn’t hear a single song they play.


	17. Wingman (Sam Tarly, Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an anonymous tumblr prompt: Sam Tarly, wingman-ing for Jon.

”She’s still staring at you, you know,” Sam said surreptitiously over the rim of his beer.  ”No no no — don’t turn around.  She’ll think you’re over-eager.”

Jon did as his friend suggested and kept his eyes straight in front of him, although it was difficult.  The minute he and Sam walked into Crow’s Tavern and saw the gorgeous redhead with legs for days sitting at the bar with her girlfriend, Jon had been able to think of little else.

"Are you… quite certain?  That she’s staring at me?" Jon asked Sam very quietly, unable to believe it.  He’d seen this girl around town before, multiple times.  And whenever he saw her, she was always either completely engrossed in some book or else chatting with one of her countless friends, totally oblivious to him.  

Before tonight he’d never seen evidence that Sansa Stark even knew he was alive.

"Quite certain," Sam said with conviction.  

"Hm," Jon said, with none.

The two sat in silence for another long moment, idly sipping their beers.  Jon kept his eyes on the television screen mounted on the far side of the bar.  He tried to focus on the Maple Leafs game, but visions of the beautiful girl with long red hair sitting not ten feet away from him kept swimming in front of his eyes and he couldn’t really manage it.

"Hey," Sam said abruptly, interrupting Jon’s feeble attempt at distracting himself.  "You should go talk to her."

"What?   _No_!” Jon said, aghast.  ”She’s here with her friend.  I’d be intruding.  And…  I mean…. well…”

 _There’s no way she’d talk to someone like me,_ he thought to himself.  Beautiful girls from wealthy families just didn’t  _talk_  to loser guys like him.

But Sam just shrugged, laughing a little.  He reached across the table and clapped Jon on the shoulder.

"I’m sick of you being emo about this girl all the time, Jon.  Just  _talk_ to her _._ It’ll be good for you.”  He stood up and glanced over Jon’s shoulder at Sansa and her friend at the bar.  ”Right.  I’m heading over there.”

“ _What_  —”

Sam looked down and grinned at him.  ”I’ll keep Jeyne occupied with my rapier wit.  All for you.  You’re welcome.”

Without another word, Sam walked towards the girls at the bar.  When he got there he started talking animatedly to Jeyne, giving Sansa only the most cursory of glances.  After a few minutes, Sansa looked up from her drink and looked directly at Jon, a small smile playing on her lips.

_Oh, fuck it._

His heart in his throat and his stomach awash in butterflies, Jon pushed back from his chair.  

 _Here goes nothing._ He took a deep breath, grit his teeth, and walked towards the trio at the bar, vowing to get Tarly back for this someday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm slowly making my way through a slight backlog of drabble prompts. :) If you have something you'd like me to write, I'd be happy to do it! Either let me know here or on tumblr, where I'm jeeno2. :)


	18. Shaggydog (Rickon Stark)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For lannistertwincestuous on tumblr, from the prompt: "The moment Rickon gets Shaggydog."

The dog Father gives him is  _big._

Except Robb says it’s not a dog.  ”It’s a direwolf,” he corrects him.  ”The Stark House sigil.”

Robb’s usually right about things.  He’s nearly a man grown now and the heir to Winterfell.  But Rickon doesn’t care what the animal’s proper name is.  He’s big, he’s beautiful, and for the first time in his life Rickon has something of his own that he doesn’t have to share with  _anybody_.  

When Rickon marvels at his size, Father, with a grin, tells him he’s still just a pup.  ”He will get much larger still,” he says.  

That makes Rickon very happy.  

The first time he touches him — Shaggydog, he decides — Rickon has a vision of himself far into the future, a man grown himself, riding into battle on Shaggydog’s enormous back.  He’s a knight, and merciless.  He carries a large bloody sword in his left hand.  Men across the Seven Kingdoms are terrified of him and his ferocious beast; and when they come upon him in battle, even the bravest among them cower in fear and beg for mercy.

But then Shaggydog licks young Rickon’s hand, and just like that, the dream shatters.  Rickon grins at his new pet and scratches him behind the ears, promising to sneak him treats after dinner.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who've sent me prompts either here on or on tumblr, thank you! I hope to have them all written, and posted here, within the next week or two. :)


	19. Embarrassed (Jon x Ygritte)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From sabaceanbabe's tumblr prompt: "Jon Snow, embarrassed."

_They know_ , Jon thought to himself, blushing crimson.  

_They know everything._

This was neither the time nor the place to be wasting time on such thoughts, he mused as he sat alone in the cavernous dining hall of Castle Black.  The wildlings and their army were less than a day’s ride south of the Wall.  He and his brothers had munitions to organize.  Cracks in the Wall to repair. 

Yet Ygritte had seen him —  _all_  of him — at least half a hundred times.  They had lain together at least that often.  And as the date of battle with her brethren drew closer it was Ygritte’s own body, naked and waiting before him — not battle plans nor stratagems — that he saw whenever he closed his eyes.

Jon needed his brothers to trust him now more then ever before.  But it didn’t matter.  He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the men of the Night’s Watch recognized him for the green boy he was.  Their snickers tonight over dinner told him that they’d read his conflicted mind as easily as if he’d been but a page in one of Maester Luwin’s books.

Jon flushed with embarrassment at the memory of their laughter, hating himself in equal measure for leaving her — and for still loving her.


	20. New Neighbors II (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for thebastardwaters on tumblr, who requested a continuation of the "Neighbors" drabble I wrote a few months ago (posted here as "Chapter 16").

They talk a lot that summer.  And slowly but surely, Gendry learns almost everything there is to know about Arya Stark.

He’d guessed right when he assumed she was young.  She’s only eighteen (a fact that is almost enough all by itself to keep him in check).  She graduated from Winterfell High, on the north side of town, in May.  Her family moved here so her father would have a shorter commute.

And to Gendry’s disappointment, she’s only staying in her parents’ new house until classes at Kings Landing University start up in the fall.

"I’m gonna major in business," she tells him one day from what’s become her usual perch during their over-the-fence chats — a fading yellow lawn chair in her parents’ backyard.  It’s stifling hot outside, and Gendry’s forehead is beaded with sweat as he mows his foster parents’ lawn and washes their cars.  Arya’s wearing Gendry’s favorite two-piece bathing suit — the silver one that covers her midriff and brings out her eyes (although he’d never dream of telling Arya any of that) — and she chats easily with Gendry as he works.  

"I hope they don’t make me take English my first year," she muses, chewing on the end of a blade of grass while Gendry tries desperately to keep his focus on her eyes.  "Such a fucking waste of time."

"Yeah," Gendry agrees, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm.  Not that he can  _really_  relate to what she’s talking about. Going to school beyond high school had never been an option for him.

"I also hope that not all the people in my dorm are total douchebags."

Gendry laughs at her bluntness.  ”Well, hopefully they won’t  _all_  be,” he says, even though he secretly hopes that every boy she meets in college is an ugly, pimply dickhead.  

They spend the rest of the afternoon together in quiet, comfortable silence.  Arya leafs through a trashy magazine as Gendry hoses off the cars in the driveway, gritting his teeth and deciding — right then and there — that before she leaves he’s going to tell her everything.

 _Why not?_  he reasons. He laughs out loud in spite of himself.  He knows he must sound a little unhinged, but he's past caring.  

 _She’s leaving soon anyway._   _I’ve got nothing to lose._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've sent me prompts, thank you! :) I hope to get to them all over the next few weeks.


	21. Don't Listen to Them (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From sandyd94's tumblr prompt: "Don't listen to them. Don't you EVER listen to them."

When Arya Stark started sleeping with Gendry Waters, neither one of them took the arrangement very seriously.  

She had a lot of fun with him of course.  And they sure as hell were compatible in bed.  (Shit _—_ the things he could  _do_  to her.)

But their spheres didn’t overlap.  In a typical week Arya hung out with her friends at the University — and Gendry wasn’t a student at all.  No; he was always either working at the garage or else drinking beer with his loser friends at the Red Keep.  So ever since that one day three months ago, when they met at the Kings Landing Carnival and they’d spent the day together going on all those rides, and he won her that stupid teddy bear, they basically never saw each other outside his bedroom.

Which suited her just fine.  

"Yeah.  I don’t have time for a relationship anyway," Gendry told her last week, waving his hand dismissively when she said how much fun she was having with all this.  "Girlfriends just…"  He trailed off, biting his lip.  He turned away from her — both of them still naked and sweating a little from their earlier activities— and stared at the wall of his bedroom.

"Girlfriends just what?" Arya prompted.  She rolled over in bed and propped her chin in her hands, waiting.  "They just  _what_?”

Gendry took a deep breath and sighed.

"They just… I can’t… look, Arya,"  He looked into her eyes, then, with a pained expression Arya had never seen him wear before.  She sat up in his bed, alarmed.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I just don’t have anything to offer a girl is all," he mumbled, looking down at his hands.  He spoke so quietly she wasn’t certain he’d intended for her to hear him.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Gendry?"  she demanded.  She crawled down the bed to where he was sitting.  She grabbed his head in her hands and forced him to look at her.  "Where the hell would you get a stupid idea like that?"

He shrugged, still not meeting her eyes.  ”Dunno,” he said.  ”I’ve always known it I guess?  Rich guys who bring their cars into the shop talk a lot of shit, and —”

"Don’t listen to them," Arya interrupted, furious.  "Don’t you EVER listen to them."  She shoved him back down onto the bed and straddled him, then, her breasts pressing into his chest and her long hair hanging down around his face, creating a kind protective curtain around the both of them.  "Any girl would be  _lucky_  to have you as her boyfriend!”

Gendry smiled at her then, with a tenderness and a wistfulness that stopped her heart.  Made her realize what she’d just said.

"I don’t want  _any girl_ , though,” he breathed against her lips.


	22. Here With Me (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from sansa-potter: "I just really need to have you here right now."

Sansa wiped her tear-streaked face with the back of her hand and sniffled before digging around in her purse for her phone.

Calling him was a bad idea.  A terrible idea, even.  She was drunk, but not too drunk to know  _that_.

But she was stuck here, miles away from her apartment, at this horrible frat party she never should have come to in the first place.  Margaery — her roommate and her ride — was drunk off her ass, too.  And Sansa hadn’t seen her in over an hour.  She was sick to her stomach from too much tequila, and she was very worried about her friend, and she just wanted someone that she knew and trusted to come  _get_  her.  And take her away from all this.  

The phone rang and rang in Sansa’s ear, and she hadn’t made up her mind what she was even going to say to him when Jon answered.

"Hello?"

If he was surprised or annoyed that his ex-girlfriend was randomly calling him in the middle of the night on a Tuesday his voice didn’t give it away.  On the contrary; his voice was quiet, and calm, and just so very  _Jon_  that Sansa nearly cried in relief when she heard it.

"Hi, Jon.  It’s Sansa." She tried hard to match his even tone but it didn’t work.  Her words were very badly slurred, even to her own ears, and she winced.  

"Oh," Jon said.  As though he hadn’t known.  "Hi, Sansa."

There was a long, awkward pause after that as Sansa wracked her brains for something to say to him.  But now that she talking to him for the first time in six months, all she could think about was how horribly their last conversation had ended.  How badly she’d treated him during their relationship.  And how, truly, she was an awful person for having disturbed him tonight in the first place.

"Ok, look," Jon said, cutting into her anxious thoughts.  "I’m not sure what this is about.  But it’s two in the morning, and I need to get back to sleep."   His voice was firm.  But it was not unkind.  Her heart soared a little in her chest at that.

"I’m drunk," Sansa said, her voice more hiccup than than anything else.   The rest of her words came out in a muddled rush.  "And I can’t get home, and I shouldn’t have come here in the first place, I really shouldn’t have.  And I can’t find Margaery anywhere and I…. oh God, Jon, I’m sorry for waking you, I really am, but…" 

She couldn’t finish the sentence.  She didn’t have the words.  And so she trailed off, her stomach suddenly a jangle of nerves.

"But what?" Jon prompted.  

Sansa swallowed hard.  ”I just… I just really need to have you here right now,” Sansa said, very quietly, before she could stop herself.  ”Please.” 

There was another long pause after that.  Sansa was about to break the silence with an  _I shouldn’t have disturbed you, I’m sorry,_  when Jon gave a long sigh.

"All right," he said, very quietly.  

"Thank you," Sansa breathed.  "Oh god, Jon, thank you, I just —"

"I’m coming," Jon said, cutting her off.  "Just sit tight."  He chuckled a little; the sound was warmer than she expected, far warmer than she deserved.  "Just give me a few minutes to throw on some clothes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, I'm finally working on some things that are longer than 500 words. ;) I will be participating in the upcoming AxG week and plan to post 2-3 Gendrya one-shots on tumblr, and here on AO3, the last week of July. Stay tuned. :)


	23. Cheer Up (Arya x Gendry)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a tumblr prompt from Optimus-Pam: "Stop trying to cheer me up!"

When Arya woke up it was the middle of the night.  Her head was in a fog and her leg was a screaming agony.

She rolled over on her hard, makeshift pallet and whimpered as hot, searing pain shot straight through her, toe to hip.  But she struggled to sit up as memories of what happened that day slowly filtered through her muddled consciousness.  

There’d been a fight between their group bound for the Wall and dozens of the Queen’s Gold cloaks.  She’d tried to help fight — and earned a severely sprained right ankle in the process.  

Afterwards there’d been a horrible fire, and they lost Yoren and most of the others.  And now she and her friends were lost and alone.  

The forest was dark, but there was still enough moonlight streaming down through the tree canopy that she could see Hot Pie and Lommy sleeping just a few yards away from her.  And she could see Gendry as well — next to her, but with several inches of space separating their bodies.  His eyes were closed and his jaw was slack with the peace he only seemed able to find while dreaming.  

In that moment Arya felt such a wave of relief that she and her friends had been spared that it nearly took her breath away.  There was something else, too, when she looked at Gendry — something that wasn’t gratitude; something she felt in the pit of her belly that made her pulse speed up and her palms grow damp as she watched him sleep.

"Hey," Gendry said, suddenly, making Arya jump back a little in surprise.  His eyes opened very slowly and fixed on her face.  The moonlight reflected in his deep pools of blue, and the look she saw in them wrenched an involuntary smile from her. 

"Hey," she said back to him, swallowing hard.  "I, uh.  Thought you were sleeping."

Gendry stretched his arms over his head and tried to stifle a yawn.  ”I was,” he told her.  He dropped his arms back down to the forest floor and sighed.  ”But I woke up.”

"Oh," Arya said, her heart hammering in her ears.  She was staring at him now; she knew that.  But he was holding her gaze, and she found she didn’t want to avert her eyes.

Tentatively, and without fully thinking it through, Arya reached across to where he was lying and gently lay the palm of her hand against his cheek.  It was warm and smooth. Gendry made a small noise of surprise at the contact, but he didn’t protest.  He smiled a little — shyly; nervously, perhaps — and slowly covered her hand with his much larger one.  

He gave it a gentle squeeze.

"I’m so glad you aren’t dead," she told him.  

"Yes," Gendry agreed.  He laughed a little.  "So am I."

She closed her eyes then and shook her head.  ”I’m so stupid,” she said miserably.    

Gendry blinked at her.  ”You’re what?”

"I’m so stupid for getting hurt," she clarified, gesturing to her leg.  "My leg is just going to slow us down.  Get us captured."

Gendry’s smile was gone now, replaced with an expression Arya did not recognize.  But it made a knot form in her belly that was wholly unlike the constant hunger she’d been feeling ever since escaping Kings Landing. 

”You are  _not_  stupid,” Gendry said, with an intensity she’d never heard from him before.  He looked into her eyes and slowly, slowly reached up to tuck a stray lock of her hair behind her ear.  She shivered a little.  ”There were dozens of gold cloaks and yet here you are, still alive.  That’s not stupid; that’s brilliant is what it is.  And you are  _not_  going to slow us down.”

Arya scoffed at him.  ”Stop lying to me,” she said, angrily.  ”And stop trying to cheer me up.  I’m not a child, and I’m not so foolish as to think that three boys and an injured girl will make it even ten miles without being captured.”

"So," Gendry said, shrugging his shoulders.  "What do you you propose we do then, hm?" he asked.  He sounded angry himself now.  "Leave you here?"

"Yes," Arya said.    

"Oh seven hells," Gendry spat.  "We’ll take turns carrying you."

"You will not take turns car —"  
  


"We are  _not_  leaving you behind!” He was shouting now and his face was very red.  ”And we are finished talking about this.”  He lay back down on his pallet and rolled over so his back was to her.  ”Good  _night_ , milady.”

* * *

 

Much later, when the sun was still hours away from rising, and Gendry was certain Arya was soundly asleep again, he crept up behind her and whispered, very quietly, into her ear.

"I’ll never leave you," he vowed brokenly, breathing her in and thanking the Seven that she was still here. 


	24. First Time (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an Anonymous tumblr prompt: "Arya x Gendry -- their first time."

Her first time with Gendry wasn’t perfect.  It was nothing like a love scene in a book, or what you might see in some stupid movie.

Strictly speaking it was actually kind of bad. It hurt a little at first, even though Gendry tried so hard to be gentle his arms shook from the effort.  And it was all over way too soon. 

But it didn’t matter so much, really.  Gendry’s blue eyes were filled with such love and tenderness for her, after, when they were lying all tangled up together in his bed, that Arya just couldn’t stop smiling.


	25. Domestic Bliss (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From wildfloweroses' tumblr prompt, asking for a Modern Day domestic bliss drabble featuring Jon x Sansa.

It had been more than six weeks since their daughter Catherine was born.  But it still took Sansa’s breath away, every single time, to see Jon cradling her in his arms as she slept.  

She came upon them in the study this time, Jon reclining and half-asleep in his worn leather chair, their daughter in his arms, sleeping and oblivious.  The digital clock on his desk showed it was a little after three in the morning.  The sleeves of his too-large sweatshirt were rolled up to his elbows, and his forearms were speckled with tiny drops of milk that must not have met with Cat’s approval when he fed her. 

Sansa tried to approach quietly. But when she entered the room Jon startled fully awake.

"Hi," he whispered, with a half-smile on his face that looked almost shy.  Like he knew he’d been caught. The room was unlit, but there was enough moonlight streaming through the open curtains for her to make out the very dark circles under his eyes. Sansa gently ghosted over them with the pads of her thumbs and his eyes fluttered closed.

The dark circles under Jon’s eyes were no more prominent than her own, Sansa knew.  But she still had six weeks of maternity leave left, and Jon had to be at work in five hours.

He needed to let her get up in the night more often.

"Jon," she said, folding her arms across her chest.  "Go to bed, please?  I’ll take her."

Jon cocked his head to the side and looked at Sansa.  ”But you were up with her last night.”  It sounded a little like pouting.  ”And I figured you needed to sleep.”

"I was," Sansa conceded.  "And I do.  But I’m able to feed her much more easily than you are — and  _you_  can’t take a nap during the day.  I can.”

Jon rubbed his eyes with his free hand.  ”But…” he began, then trailed off when a yawn overtook him.

"But what?" Sansa prompted.  She kneeled in front of him and gently took the baby from him. Catherine squirmed a little against Sansa’s chest during the transition but didn’t wake.

"You’re right, Sansa," he admitted.  "I know you’re right.  But I never get to see her during the day," he mumbled.  "I miss her so much when I’m at work and…"

Sansa leaned forward and gently pressed her lips to Jon’s.  He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck.

"I never thought I’d love someone this much," he murmured against her skin.  Then laughed.  "Aside from you that is."

 _I know what you mean_ , Sansa thought as she helped her husband into bed.  She climbed in next to him and rested her head on his chest, their daughter nestled between them.


	26. Bullied (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an anonymous tumblr prompt: "Jon x Sansa, bullied."

Sansa, perched on a chair inside her favorite coffee shop, looks up from her book and out the window at the passersby on the street.

Among the frat boys and sorority girls sauntering by in their North Face jackets and leggings that are far too skimpy for this cold winter weather is Jon Snow, that cute boy from Calculus class.

Her eyes dart between Jon, the frat boys, and then back again.  And she frowns.

She’s only spoken to Jon once.  And it wasn’t even a real conversation.  Two weeks ago, when Prof. Luwin handed back their midterms, she’d gotten an A.  She was so happy about it she couldn’t keep it inside.

"Oh my  _god!_ ”, she blurted out to the boy sitting next to her.  ”I can’t believe it!”  She could feel a goofy grin spreading across her face.  She probably looked like a complete idiot but she couldn’t help it and she didn’t care.  She’d studied  _hard_  for that test.

Jon Snow smiled at her, then — a genuine smile that reached his eyes and lit up his entire face.  ”Congratulations, Sansa,” he’d said warmly.  His eyes were rich and silver, like molten steel, and his hair was dark and curly.

He held her gaze for a long moment after that but then suddenly looked away, a slight blush rising on his cheeks. 

Sansa took to watching Jon Snow after that.  Not stalking him, of course.  Nothing like that.  She would glance over at him in class every so often while they were supposed to be working on derivatives, and she’d watch him bite his bottom lip and furrow his brow when the problem set was a particularly difficult one.  She learned from a friend that he lived in the dorm next to hers, and sometimes she would accidentally-on purpose time her departure in the mornings with when he left for the gym.

She learned from all this observation that a group of idiot frat boys enjoy tormenting Jon.  Westeros University is one of the most expensive colleges in the country, and most of Sansa’s classmates are spoiled children of politicians, high-profile attorneys, and doctors with highly sought-after specialties.  There are always slots kept open, however, for bright kids from less affluent backgrounds.  

Sansa doesn’t know what Jon’s situation is exactly but he is, apparently, here at Westeros on a full ride.  And certain of their classmates enjoy rubbing that little detail in his face.

As she watches the scene outside the coffee shop she sees one of the frat boys approach Jon and point at him.  The kid laughs at something — Sansa can’t tell what the joke is supposed to be — and then gets his friends to join in.

Jon Snow stops walking and ducks his head as the boys, still laughing, pass him by.

Enraged, Sansa gets up from her seat.  She pulls her wool coat around her shoulders and darts out of the shop quickly before Jon has a chance to move on.

When she approaches him Jon looks up, surprised.  

"Hey," Sansa says, trying to sound casual.  It’s only the second time she’s spoken to him, and she tries hard to pretend that she didn’t just see what happened with those idiot boys a moment ago.  She does her best to ignore how hard her heart is hammering in her chest.

Jon blinks at Sansa.  ”Um.  Hey?” he says.  He looks down at the ground and kicks at some snow with his boot.  She keeps her eyes trained on his face, though, and notices he’s starting to blush.  ”What’s up, Sansa?”

"Want to have coffee with me?" The words slip out of her before she can stop them.

He looks up at her again in surprise.  His blush deepens.  ”Um.  Yeah.”  He nods his head a little and the right side of his mouth quirks up in a half smile.  ”That would be… that would be great.”

She grins at him and motions for him to join her inside the coffee shop.

"My stuff’s already here," she says.  "I have a great seat by the window." 

"All right," he tells her, still smiling, as he follows her inside.


	27. Blown Fuses (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a tumblr prompt from LondonRainings: "Person A and Person B change a lightbulb together."

Gendry Waters knew from the day he and Arya Stark moved in together that the wiring in their new apartment was shit.

Unfortunately, this place is all they can afford on his salary and her student loans. But every time someone so much as opens the front door to their building the lights in the hallway flicker.  And his years in construction have taught him that that’s never a good sign.  

Just as Gendry expected, it takes less than a week for the first light bulb in their kitchen to blow out.

"I’ll take care of it," Arya says before Gendry has a chance to volunteer.  She’s still wearing the oversized Morissey t-shirt she slept in last night — the one that cuts her off mid-thigh — and the determined expression that Gendry has come to know like he knows how to breathe.

"Do you know where the ladder is?" he asks her; trying, and mostly failing, he knows, not to sound like a condescending dick.

"Of course I know where the ladder is,  _idiot_ ,” she responds, shooting him a nasty look.  ”In the utility closet.”

She pads off down the hallway in bare feet and returns a few moments later with a new light bulb tucked into her pocket and a ladder that’s easily twice as tall as she is.

Gendry has learned over the years that Arya Stark has many strengths.  She can whip his ass in chess with one hand tied behind her back; she can shoot and dress a deer better than any guy he ever knew in Michigan could; and she can kiss him so hard, and so well, that he forgets his name.

But being handy around electrical stuff is  _not_  one of her strengths.  Not that Gendry is about to tell her that.  He remembers what happened the one and only time he tried to help her fix her car back in high school — and he’d rather not relive  _that_  ugly experience on what’s been a very pleasant Sunday morning so far.

Arya struggles hard to get the ladder open.  Gendry has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from offering to help her, but fortunately for them both she eventually manages the task and props it up underneath the faulty bulb.

She climbs the steps very carefully, one at a time.  When she gets to the top she handily unscrews the old bulb, places it carefully on the top rung of the ladder, and screws the new bulb in place.

"Flip the light switch," she instructs Gendry.  

He obliges.  

Less than a second later, an enormous shower of sparks comes cascading down from the ceiling, making Arya nearly fall off the ladder in shock and causing Gendry to shout a string of profanities that would have made his foster mother furious.

"That," Arya says, once she’s recovered enough to speak, "was  _not_  my fault.”

"No, it wasn’t," Gendry agrees.  His heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s about to beat right out of his chest.  

"I’m calling our goddamn landlord," Arya mutters under her breath.

"Good plan," Gendry agrees.  "I’ll get the phone."


	28. Wingman, II (Sam x Gilly, Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okamimiko requested a drabble a few weeks back where Jon acts as Sam's wingman. Hope this is what you had in mind. :)

Sam sat in the backseat of Jon’s car, trying to think about baseball, his English homework — anything but what they were about to do.

But Jon and Sansa were up there in the front seats, Jon’s hand resting on the clutch and Sansa’s much smaller hand covering his.  As Jon drove them to Gilly’s party, every so often Sansa would lean over to whisper something into his ear, making him smile.

The two of them were so ridiculously cute and adorable together it made distraction impossible.

As if Sansa could read Sam’s thoughts — as if she knew exactly how terrified he was right now — she turned around a little in the passenger seat and smiled at him.

"It’s going to go great, Sam," she assured him.   _Right,_  he thought miserably.   _Easy for her to say_.  ”She’s going to  _love_  you.”

Sam wasn’t so certain about that.  

Sure — Gilly had invited him to this party of hers after yesterday’s French class.  But from what he could tell, Gilly also invited half the second year class at Northern College.  Plus, there was that creepy old dad of hers who was bound to be there tonight, as well as her billion sisters who always seemed to be on the lookout for her.

Sam finally admitted to Jon last week that he’s been hopeless about Gilly for months now.  Ever since that one night they’d stayed up together until three a.m., side by side in the student lounge, working on their English papers.  Gilly had gushed that night about how smart Sam was, and her eyes just kind of…  _lit up_  when she said it, too. 

She’d even touched his hand before saying good night.

Sam didn’t have much experience with girls.  Or, actually,  _any_  experience with girls.  But he knew enough to know that Gilly was the sweetest, prettiest girl he’d ever met, and he’d give just about anything if she’d go with him to the winter formal next week.

After what felt like five hours, but which was probably only about fifteen minutes, Jon parked the car on the curb by Gilly’s house.  There were at least fifteen other cars already there.  Sam’s stomach suddenly became a mess of knots and he decided he couldn’t go through with it.

"I can’t go through with it," he blurted out to Jon as he and Sansa exited the car.  "I can’t, you guys.  She’s going to  _laugh_  at me.  She’s going to turn me down in front of all of those people, and —”

"Sam," Jon said, interrupting him.  He clapped his oldest friend on the shoulder and shook his head.  "Let us do this for you, all right?"

"Yeah, Sam," Sansa agreed.  "Jon and I will get her sisters to play ‘quarters’ with us in their back room.  And that should give you all the opportunity you need."

Realizing it was pointless to resist, Sam sighed, hung his head, and let his friends lead him to where Gilly and the others were waiting.


	29. Homecoming (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to a tumblr prompt from Optimus-Pam: "Gendrya: You came home!"

Arya anxiously scans the crowd of people milling about baggage claim, hoping to catch sight of the shock of black hair and the bright blue eyes she hasn’t seen in what feels like several lifetimes.

She sees businessmen in three-piece suits hugging their wives and children.  Parents, picking up long-haired college students who’ve come home for the summer.  Elderly couples holding hands as their middle-aged sons carry their suitcases.

Right before Arya is about to scream — to stomp her feet, to throw something, in frustrated impatience — she finally sees the men of Gendry’s troop, walking single file down the corridor and right towards her.

* * *

 

It’s been a little over eighteen months since Gendry was drafted into the Army and shipped off to Vietnam.

It didn’t come as a surprise.  Young men without families who weren’t in college were sent over in droves that year, to fight a faceless enemy no one in America even knew much about.

The fact that they’d been half-expecting it didn’t make their parting any less painful.

"I’ll write," Arya promised him, clutching at his sleeves outside the bus terminal.  The rain poured down on them that frigid November morning, masking the tears streaming down their faces.. 

"I know," he assured her.  He’d nodded, then, and kissed her wetly one last time.

He climbed aboard the Greyhound and waved to her from his window.  The stricken look on his face broke Arya’s heart all over again.  

And then he was gone.

During his deployment Gendry wrote when he could.  But writing had always been difficult for him, and his letters didn’t come often enough for Arya.  The ones he did send told her how he spent his days and reassured her he was safe, and she was grateful for every single one. Yet they were still a poor substitute for  _him_  on all those horribly lonely nights when it was just her and whatever stupid shit happened to be on television.

(She never watched the news if she could help it, though.  The news — especially news about the war — only made her angry and sick to her stomach.  Whenever she heard about death tolls she had nightmares for days.  All those poor American boys, dying for no reason at all.)

* * *

 

As the men in Army fatigues continue to file past her, and Arya desperately scans their faces, she clutches Gendry’s most recent letter — the one telling her he was coming home today — tight in her hand.

At last, there comes a wild shout of her name from over a hundred feet away.

“ _ARYA_!”

A moment later someone grabs her.  She has just enough time to register that it’s Gendry — that he’s here, that he’s  _home_  — before his lips are on hers, hungry and desperate.  She throws her arms around his neck and he lifts her clean off her feet, spinning her around and around as she shrieks with laughter and he peppers her face with kisses.

"You came back!" Arya says, breathless, still laughing.

"I did," Gendry agrees.  He stops spinning her for a moment and kisses her on the mouth again — long, and sweet, and true.

After a very long moment he breaks away, breathing hard now.  He rests his forehead against hers.  ”And I’m never leaving you again,” he murmurs against her lips.

They leave the airport together an hour later, hand in hand, the future moments she can share with Gendry now that he's home again flashing through Arya's mind like images on a screen. 


	30. Wedding Party (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from LondonRainings: "Arya x Gendry, childhood best friends." I eventually hope to expand this into a lengthy (and smutty... hee... ) one-shot. Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll have time to do that. So for now, I'm just gonna put this scene here. :)

Gendry looked himself over in the mirror one last time before deciding his bow tie was about as straight as it was ever going to be.

If Robb didn’t like it — well.  Robb knew what he’d gotten himself into when he’d asked Gendry to be an usher at this thing.  Or at least he should have known.  A perfectly straight bow tie just wasn’t going to be part of the deal.

In truth, when Robb Stark called Gendry six months ago and asked him to stand up with him at his wedding to Jeyne Westerling, a girl Robb apparently met in grad school, Gendry was more than a little surprised.  He and Robb were very good friends at one point.  Best friends, in fact, for most of their childhood.  But Robb went off to some Ivy League college after high school while Gendry stayed behind to work in his foster father’s shop.  Sure, they’d kept in touch for a while.  But over time Robb started coming home less and less frequently, and things between them were just never the same.

Robb had at least a million siblings.  Any of them would be better at this than Gendry was.  Nevertheless, Gendry couldn’t say no to his old friend — even if he’d only agreed to renting and wearing this monkey suit out of a sense of loyalty to the friendship he and Robb once had.

Just as Gendry was checking his black-on-gold cuff links (a gift from the bride to Robb’s ushers) one last time, the door to the guys’ changing room was thrown open so hard it banged against the far wall.  A tiny girl in a fancy hairdo and a pale blue bridesmaid dress charged into the room, hands curled into fists.

"Where the hell is Robb?" she demanded.

"Err," Gendry said, taken aback by her bluntness.  Guys could have been naked in here for all she’d known.  He looked around the room blankly, even though they were the only two people in it.  "I… don’t know where Robb is,” he admitted.

The girl tottered over to him on pale blue heels that must have been at least three inches high.  She looked up at him and raised a manicured eyebrow.  ”Isn’t keeping an eye on the groom, like, your _only_ job?”

"No," he told her, his eyes wide.  He threw up his hands in irritation and self-defense.  "I _think_ my only job is to walk down the aisle with some stupid girl, and then stand up there in this costume while Robb says stuff to Jeyne."  He knew he probably shouldn’t say things like that to someone he didn’t even know.  But his annoyance at the whole situation was getting the better of him and in the moment he just didn’t care.   "Or at least, that’s all Robb told me I had to do.  Though I guess he used different words."

To Gendry’s surprise, the girl began to laugh.

"Oh, God.  I’m so glad someone else is as annoyed by all this as I am," she said between giggles, shaking her head.  She seemed oblivious to the havoc she was wreaking on her complicated hairstyle in the process.

Gendry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  ”Yeah.”  He ran his hands over his face and rolled his eyes.  ”It’s all pretty stupid, isn’t it.”   Gendry’s mouth twitched up into a half-smile.

"I’m Arya, by the way," the girl said, holding out her hand for him to shake.  "Arya Stark."

_Arya Stark._

Suddenly, visions of the girl standing in front of him as a five, seven, eleven year old girl floated before his eyes.  A skinny little thing with perpetually scraped knees and skinned elbows, chasing after Robb and his friends with a huge stick in both hands, shouting at them to wait up for her.

"I’m Gendry Waters," he said back to her, smiling broadly now. He put his hand in hers and shook it.  Her handshake was surprisingly firm.  "And I remember you."

A moment later, Robb ducked his head into the room.  His eyes were wide — crazed, really — and his hair was a wreck, like he’d been anxiously running his hands through it for several hours.

"We’re starting, you guys! Hurry!" he shrieked at them before disappearing again.

Gendry looked down at Arya and smirked.

"Shall we?" he asked, offering her his arm.

"Just a minute," she murmured under her breath.  She bit her bottom lip, her eyes focused on a spot just below his chin.

Gendry, confused, was about to ask what the problem was.  A moment later, though, he felt her delicate hands fiddling with his bow tie, tightening the knot and straightening the ends, and he understood.  

"There," she said at length, giving the tie a pat.  Her words were soft little puffs of air against the small expanse of exposed skin at the base of his throat.  He shivered a little, involuntarily, not really knowing why.

He swallowed thickly and looked down at this girl — a woman now, really — completely unrecognizable from the girl she used to be, decked out head to toe in jewelry and makeup and a dress that probably cost more than last month’s rent.  He suspected the little girl with the scraped knees would have absolutely hated this getup.  He couldn’t help but think the woman standing in front of him now probably felt much the same way about it.

"All right," Arya said eventually, taking his arm.  "Let’s get this over with."  

Her hand was so warm Gendry could feel it through the jacket of his rented tux, through his dress shirt, all the way down to his skin.

“Wait, Arya,” Gendry said, stopping her.  “Are you sure Jeyne wants us to walk down together?” he asked, lamely.  “Maybe she has us assigned to different people or something.”

“Oh, fuck Jeyne,” Arya said, rolling her eyes.  “The only other guys in this thing are my brothers and fucking Theon Greyjoy.”  Gendry didn’t know who Theon Greyjoy was.  He guessed it would be better not to ask.  “If Jeyne doesn’t like us walking down together she’s going to have to get over it.”

Gendry had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud.

“All right, then,” he said.  She tightened her grip on his arm at his words, and he suddenly found it hard to concentrate on anything but the gentle pressure of her hand against his sleeve.  “Let’s do it.”

 

 


	31. Wedding Party, II (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In response to a tumblr prompt from whowhatsitwhich: "Gendrya, Adpodyopis" (to mentally undress someone). This is a continuation of the previous Arya x Gendry wedding party drabble that, if the gods are good, will ultimately, someday, maybe be turned into a proper full-length oneshot. Since I dont' know what that will happen I'm posting this next snippet here for now. ;)

After what felt like an eternity, Arya was finally back from her duties as bridesmaid.

"Come on," she said impatiently.  Like she was the one who’d been waiting on him.  Without waiting for a response she pulled Gendry by the hand towards the crowded dance floor. 

As they wove their way through wedding guests and caterers, Gendry noticed Arya was a good three inches shorter now than she was when she left him to mingle with her family and Robb’s friends.  He glanced down at her feet and, seeing them bare, realized she must have ditched those horrible high heels at some point.  When they got to a spot near the very back of the room — by the speakers; away from most of the other dancers — she stood up on her tiptoes and wound her arms around his neck, pulling herself flush against his body. 

The complicated bodice of her bridesmaid dress crumpled the white lily in Gendry’s lapel.  But those stupid pictures were over and done with hours ago.  And right now, with three gin and tonics in his bloodstream and Arya’s small body pressed up against his, Gendry gave exactly zero fucks about flowers.

"If any of my parents’ friends are pissed that I’m ditching them to dance with you, they’re just going to have to deal with it," she said, her mouth just a hairsbreadth away from his.  "You’re interesting, and you’re cute.  And my aunts and uncles aren’t.  Neither are Robb’s douchey friends."

Gendry laughed at her boldness.  But it was a nervous laugh, unable as he was to quite believe he was dancing in the arms of little Arya Stark, all grown up now and so gorgeous in her low-cut bridesmaid dress he could hardly stand it.  The pale white skin of her throat was ringed with a beautiful pearl necklace, and her updo showed off her neck and her delicate collarbone.  And as they danced together, their bodies moving in slow rhythm to the beat of the music, the only things he could focus on were the tug of her hands on his sleeves, the feel of her small breasts pressed up against his chest, and the sweet smelling perfume she wore in her hair.

Suddenly, and without warning, an image of Arya, naked and waiting for him in his bed, flashed in front of his eyes.  He wondered what it would be like to touch her — to work her like the steel he knew so well, to wrench sounds of pleasure from her as he tasted her.

He closed his eyes, shook it off.  

 _Not now_ , he chided himself.

As though she’d heard his unspoken thoughts and disagreed with them, Arya chose that moment to close the short distance between them and kiss him full on the mouth.  She reached up to tangle her delicate hands in his hair, and when she rolled up on her toes to deepen the kiss, he was lost.


	32. Scary Movie (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt from sansaandwinterfell: "There's someone in the house!"

Jon was more than a little surprised when Sansa suggested they watch “The Silence of the Lambs” together.

For one thing, he couldn’t quite believe she hadn’t  _already_  seen it.  The movie was a classic.  He and Sam watched it together, like a ritual, at the end of finals every semester.

For another thing, Jon knew how easily scared Sansa was.  He just couldn’t understand why she’d want to watch a creepy movie like that on a  date.  

But he didn't dare give voice to his confusion.  On the contrary: he quickly agreed to see “The Silence of the Lambs” with her when she mentioned it over the phone.  Whatever it was between them was far too exciting and new to object to anything she might want to do with him.  Especially when what she’d proposed meant they’d get to be alone together in her dark basement for a few hours.

Of course, Sansa almost immediately proved his suspicions about her ability to handle this movie correct.  Anthony Hopkins was on the screen for less than ten minutes before Sansa’s hands were over her face, her bright eyes peeking out at the screen through splayed fingers.

"Oh God, Jon," she exclaimed a few minutes later.  "I think — did you hear that noise?  I think — I think there’s someone in the house!"

She gave a little shriek and buried her head into his shoulder.  Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close.  Sansa pressed little kisses to the sensitive place where his neck met his shoulder, humming against his skin.

Jon had a lot of trouble focusing on the movie after that.  But Sansa’s head stayed on his shoulder, her hair smelling faintly of flowers and lavender, and his arms stayed put, wrapped tightly around her delicate shoulders.  For some reason Jon couldn't quite name, he didn’t mind missing out on the film one bit.


	33. The Laundromat (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a three-sentence-fic tumblr prompt from whowhatsitwhich: "Arya x Gendry, the laundromat."

Arya had just dumped her bag of dirty clothes on the laundromat’s long wooden table when the guy who just moved into the apartment across the hall — the really hot one; the one with the muscles and the jet black hair and the bright blue eyes — walked right up to her, hands stuffed deep in his pockets.  

"Hey," he grunted in her direction, nodding a little, keeping his eyes neatly averted from her haphazard pile of underwear, t-shirts, and jeans..  "I’m new here and, uh… could you show me how to use these machines?"

She knew the guy was a mechanic so his request confused her — surely he knew how to turn the knob on a stupid old washing machine? — but she agreed to show him anyway, saying she was just about to throw in a load and he should come see how she did it.

"I’m Gendry," he said, looking over her shoulder as Arya adjusted the knob on the ancient washer, her backside brushing up against his front; and Arya had to bite her lip to stifle a grin as the memory of a stupid Cosmo article Sansa once read her, listing  _laundromats_  as one of the best places to pick up single guys, floated through her brain.


	34. Water Balloons (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for an anonymous tumblr three-sentence-fic prompt: "Arya x Gendry, water balloons"

"Eyes up here," Waters," Arya said, sarcasm and amusement dripping from her every word in equal measure a half-second before Gendry finally managed to wrench his eyes away from her drenched, clingy — and  _very_  sheer — white t-shirt.

 When he finally made eye contact with her she lobbed another water balloon at him,  _hard,_ hitting him right on the shoulder.

"Ow!" he said, only half-joking, rubbing the tender point of contact with the flat of his hand as more water splashed against his shirt.  He threw a retaliatory water balloon at Arya but she ducked just in time and it missed her completely.  It exploded against a tree a full half-foot to Arya's left, making her laugh.    

The sight of Arya — happy, laughing; utterly glorious in the September sunlight, her sodden and sheer clothing leaving almost nothing to the imagination — made Gendry very glad her brothers went inside an hour ago. 


	35. Locked Up (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from CrossingWinter: "Arya x Gendry, prison AU." This is pretty cracky, but it's what I came up with. ;)

Arya could tell right away that the new guy was unsettled by her.

 She was used to it.  To a certain extent, anyway.  The lingering looks from the other girls as she got dressed in the morning.  The stares from the kitchen staff as she bused her tray in the dining hall   Like no one in this place could believe a tiny little rich girl like her could have possibly done the things she was in here for.  

There was something different about the way the new guard was staring at her, though.   _Waters,_  he’d told them this morning, trying to sound tough, the way they all did their first day on the job.  Officer Gendry Waters, with his black hair and his bright blue eyes, and his standard-issue uniform that did little to hide how built he was underneath it.

Those blue eyes bored into her with an intensity she hadn’t seen from a guy since before she’d gotten caught for what she’d done to Raff and Polliver.  

And his eyes stayed glued to her all day.   As she straightened her bunk for inspection.  As she walked to the bathroom to take a shower.  

When Arya caught him still looking at her after she’d stripped down for the shower itself in the hallway outside the women’s bathroom, the right side of her mouth quirked up in a half-smile.

"Hey," she called over to him.  Loudly, so he’d hear her over the rush of running water from the showers.  "Waters."  His eyes — which had been fixed on an invisible spot just beyond her left shoulder — met hers, then flitted away again as color stained his cheeks. 

Her grin broadened.  

"Wanna give me a hand in there?"  Officer Waters glanced her way again and she jerked her thumb towards the bathroom behind her, one eyebrow raised.

"That’s enough out of you, Stark."  Waters coughed into his hand, but not before his cheeks went scarlet.  Arya had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.  "Shut up and take your damn shower."

Without another word, Officer Waters turned on his heels and practically ran from the scene.

As Arya lathered up her hair with the shitty prison-issued shampoo — as she washed her tits, her ass, the rest of her body — she smiled to herself, thinking how much fun this new guy was going to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I'm working on my WIPs. Pinky swear.


	36. Boyfriend (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a trick-or-treat tumblr drabble prompt from rumaan: "Jon x Sansa: Everyone thinks they’re dating and then they start wondering if they’re dating."

Jon startles awake to the singularly unpleasant sensation of seven-year-old Rickon Stark poking him, hard and repeatedly, on the shoulder.

"Mmmphpm," Jon says blearily from his makeshift bed on the Starks’ living room couch.  He swats blindly at Rickon — to get him to stop, to get him to knock it off and go away.  But Rickon only laughs at him and keeps jabbing.

Jon knows he should probably get up and get gone.  If little Rickon is already awake and pestering him it’s only a matter of time before Arya and the rest of Sansa’s siblings come bounding down the stairs too, finding him here and asking him all sorts of uncomfortable questions about  _why_  he’s still here. 

But Jon can’t seem to make himself open his eyes and get moving.    

* * *

 

The Halloween party last night was fun.  Very fun, in fact.  But Margaery Tyrell and her brother showed up shortly before midnight, and after that it wasn’t long before things took a turn for the very drunk and very destructive.  

After everyone finally left Jon stayed up with Sansa until nearly three in the morning, doing damage control on the wrecked kitchen and on the spot in the living room where the keg stand got knocked over.  (Ned and Catelyn Stark were going to  _kill_  her if the house still looked like this when they came back from Lake Tahoe.  Throwing the party here had kind of been his idea in the first place, so Jon figured he owed it to her to stay with her and clean up.)

The kiss Sansa gave him before finally going upstairs to her bedroom — sweet and hot and needy all at once — had been as unexpected as it was entirely welcome.  Jon was exhausted from the long night and half-drunk himself but at the first press of her lips to his he grabbed her and pulled her close.  Realizing, suddenly, that kissing his best friend Sansa Stark had been all he’d wanted to do for months now.

* * *

 

"Sansa!" Rickon shouts at the top of his lungs when it becomes clear that Jon doesn’t plan to get off the sofa.  "Your boyfriend won’t wake up!"

_Boyfriend._

It’s something her siblings call him all the time —  _boyfriend_  — no matter how much Sansa and he protest and say  _we’re only friends_.  Whenever Jon drops her off at home after a football game, for example, his jacket around her slender shoulders.  Whenever he comes by after school to work on Calculus with her, their heads inclined towards each other as she absently chews on her bottom lip.

This morning, though, all Jon can think as the word  _boyfriend_  rings out in the empty room is that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be Sansa Stark’s boyfriend after all.  

Sansa descends the stairs a moment later, her hair still a wreck from his roving hands and her eyes ringed with the remains of last night’s makeup.  The small smile she gives him when she sees him — lying on her sofa, still in the same jeans and white t-shirt he wore yesterday — tells Jon that she’s wondering the exact same thing about him.


	37. Sunscreen (Jon Snow, Arya Stark)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a three-sentence-fic prompt from crossingwinter: "Jon and Arya, there just wasn't enough SPF in that sunscreen."

Her back was as red as the lobsters they’d had on the beach last night, and she kept picking at her thin cotton t-shirt as though even the barest touch of it against her skin was painful.

Jon tried teasing her about it — “I guess Gendry doesn’t know what he’s doing with the sunblock after all, eh?” — but that only earned him a punch on the shoulder that was much harder than he would have ever expected from such a tiny nineteen-year-old girl.

But despite Arya’s surly attitude this morning — despite the cold glances from Catelyn, Sansa’s typical standoffishness, and Theon Greyjoy’s irritating presence — Jon was still so happy to be here on this Stark family vacation he just couldn’t stop smiling.


	38. Yearning (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt from the incomparable Rumaan: "Jon x Sansa; yearning." If the gods are good I will have time in early 2015 to turn this into my first Jon x Sansa WIP. In the meantime, I'm putting this bit right here.

When two moons’ turns ago Sam Tarly finally convinced Jon to join him in service to the Queen in the North, Sam — who only had eyes for his Gilly — had not mentioned that the queen was uncommonly beautiful.

But now that Jon is here in Winterfell as the newest member of Sansa Stark’s Queensguard, the queen’s beauty, and her unparalleled kindness, are all he can think of.  The gentle slope of her shoulders; the milky-white perfection of her skin; the glimmer in her blue eyes whenever she sits her iron-wrought throne, meting out gentle justice to her loyal bannermen — they are all as visible to Jon when his eyes are closed in fitless slumber as they are when he’s standing right in front of her.    

He wonders what the queen would do to him if were she to ever learn of his depravity.  Geld him, most like.  Geld him and send him right back to the Wall, where he would spend the rest of his days shivering and alone.

After two moons spent in Sansa Stark’s glorious presence Jon is not certain he could bear being cast away from her.  

And so he guards his queen, says the right words when she asks him to pledge his life to her, and keeps his eyes fixed on an invisible spot over her right shoulder so as not to betray his heart.


	39. Shoes (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt from the amazing celiatully/crossingwinter: "Really? Those are the shoes you are wearing?"

"Really? Those are the shoes you’re wearing?"  Gendry sounded a little panicked.

Arya raised one eyebrow at him and looked down at her feet, clad comfortably in her favorite chucks.

"Yeah," she confirmed, shrugging.  "So what?  No one’s going to see my feet under miles of white dress, anyway.  And I want at least one part of me to be comfortable tonight."

Gendry — looking so goddamn sexy in his rented tux it was all Arya could do to keep from tearing it off him — ran his hands through his hair anxiously.  After ten years together Arya was able to read him like a book.  She knew he was warring with himself right now, trying to decide whether or not to convince her to wear proper bride shoes.  To wear heels, or something stupid like that, like Sansa did at her wedding and like Margaery did at hers.

"If your parents find out you’re wearing sneakers —" he began.

Arya clapped her small hand over his mouth, cutting him off.

"My parents _love_  you,” she insisted.  ”And they’re thrilled we’re getting married.  Or at least, they’re paying for this and showing up.”  She took her hand off of him and kissed him, hard, on the lips.  ”If they say one word about my fucking shoes I’ll make certain they know the whole thing was my idea, not yours.  And then I’ll take one off and throw it at them.”


	40. Not Again (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Optimus-Pam on tumblr, based on the following prompt: "Ned Stark saw the fire in Aegon Targaryen’s eyes as the bastard blacksmith placed his plain, humble cloak upon Arya’s shoulders, warding off the chill of a sudden spring snow."

Ned Stark saw the fire in Aegon Targaryen’s eyes as the bastard blacksmith placed his plain, humble cloak upon Arya’s shoulders, warding off the chill of a sudden spring snow.

He knew what he’d just agreed to was something few in the Realm would understand. Allowing his youngest daughter to marry Robert’s bastard get simply because she was in love with him, rather than arranging for a smarter, more strategic match for her, was something even Cat berated him for over last night’s supper.

But Ned knew only too well what happened when headstrong young Stark girls were forced into matches that did not suit them. And it was a very different girl with wolf in her blood he was thinking of when he’d said yes to Gendry’s suit.

"I’m sorry, but I won’t stand for it," Lord Stark said to Aegon Targaryen, stepping closer to him so Gendry and Arya would not hear his words. "Not again."


	41. Father (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For an anonymous tumblr prompt: "Quiet me; Jon x Sansa"

"Hello," Jon whispers, a little awkwardly, as he slides one calloused fingertip along the soft cheek of the babe in his arms.  "I’m…" 

Jon trails off as the words that come next stick in his throat.  They bring back so many memories.  Of a happiness he never knew, of a parent’s love that was never his.  Of a heart-wrenching grief that still, to this day, cuts far deeper than even Sansa knows, even now.

But then Jon looks —  _really_  looks — at what he’s holding.  A babe born less than a fortnight ago.  _Their_  babe.  A tiny girl that smells of strawberries and happiness that he and his lady wife made, together, right here in this very room.  A babe born out of their love and laughter.

The girl coos at Jon, and he feels his heart twist in his chest a little as she wraps her tiny fist around his finger, gripping tightly. 

"I’m your Father," Jon says, finding his voice at last. 


	42. Jon x Sansa (Wed Me)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For an Anon prompt on tumblr: "Jon x Sansa, wed me"

Sansa scrutinizes her reflection in the looking glass for a long moment.

She looks over her hair, plaited neatly and pulled over one shoulder.  

She takes in her dress.  It’s very plain.  Nothing at all like the gowns she wore as a maid at Winterfell or in Kings Landing.  But it’s what Sansa wore she wore the first time they laid eyes upon each other again in the Vale after so many years apart.  And for reasons she does not fully understand it felt like the right dress to wear today.

Sansa takes in a deep breath.  She closes her eyes and steels her nerves.  Reminds herself what’s waiting for her outside.  

Love.  Hope.  And above all, Jon.  

She opens her eyes and nods at her reflection.  

"All right," she says quietly to empty air, trying to keep her voice steady.

* * *

 

Jon’s already at the heart tree when she arrives, waiting.

Like her, he’s dressed plainly.   His eyes stay riveted on her as she reaches the tree and slowly, slowly makes her way to his side.

Feeling suddenly bold, she takes his hands in hers.  Jon sucks in a breath at the gentle press of her hands against his and he closes his eyes.

His hands are shaking as badly as hers are. 

When he opens his eyes again Sansa can see her own face swimming in his unshed tears.  A far more beautiful version of the plain, scared girl she saw in the looking glass.

_Is that how Jon sees me?_

"Sansa," he says eventually, his voice rough with emotion.  He caresses the side of her face with one hand.  "Your dress—"

"I know it’s not very pretty," Sansa cuts him off, blushing a little.  Perhaps he’d once had visions of a beautiful girl in white waiting for him when he imagined this day as a young boy.  "I probably should have worn something else.  I’m sorry, I — "

"No," Jon insists.  "You shouldn’t have."  The right side of his mouth quirks up into a half smile.  He leans forward to press a gentle kiss to her lips.  "What you’re wearing right now is… well.  It’s perfect."

With clasped hands they they say the ancient words in front of the heart tree together.  

That night, they dine on mutton they singed badly in their haste to ready it for the table.  But when Jon brings the first bite to Sansa’s lips she decides she’s never tasted anything so fine.


	43. Haunt Me (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt from jeansimmons.

When Gendry showed up on her doorstep, half-starved and delirious with fever, he looked so much older, and so battered, and so  _different_  she had trouble believing it was really him.

"Hello, m’lady," he mumbled to her through cracked and swollen lips.  His yellow and purple bruises made his face nearly unrecognizable.  But it was unequivocally Gendry’s stupid voice saying the words, making believing that it was really and truly him, after all these years, somewhat easier.  

Gendry tried to bow his head but the simple motion proved to be too much.  He tripped over nothing Arya could see and stumbled to the ground before she could catch him.

* * *

 

Sansa decided they ought to keep him here at Winterfell for the now.  She said it authoritatively, as though she thought Arya might fight her on this and like she had an argument for why they should keep him already prepared.

As if Arya would ever protest this.  This was  _Gendry,_ and he was bullheaded and stupid for leaving her, but he was here with her, again, at last.  

There was no power in the Seven Kingdoms that could make her turn him away now, after everything else she’d lost.  

———

The sisters took it in turns to watch over him as he slept fitfully in Bran’s old bed.  They didn’t know what was wrong with him exactly, other than the bruises they could see, and they quickly agreed that until his fever broke he oughtn’t to be left on his own for more than a few minutes at a time.  Just in case.

Sansa, always the responsible, dutiful older sister, initially insisted on taking the overnight shift.  Arya would have none of it.

"You can’t sleep sitting upright," she said pointedly.  "I can.  You run Winterfell now, you need your rest.  I’ll stay up with him."

_What if he wakes and I’m not here to see it?_

Sansa nodded once and retreated, leaving Arya alone with Gendry, and her muddled thoughts, in the dark.

* * *

 

And he did wake while she was with him, long past midnight, the restless back-and-forth turning of his head on the pillow the only sign of it.

"Arya," he murmured thickly.  His voice sounded rough from disuse and thirst, and Arya rushed to get him the glass of water Sansa’d brought before retiring to her own chamber.

"Here," she said to him quietly, handing him the glass.  He slowly eased himself up into a sitting position and leaned back against the pillows.  He tried to smile at her, but it looked more like a grimace of pain than anything else to Arya.  He brought the glass to his lips, drinking eagerly.

"Thank you," he said at length when he’d drained the glass.  He placed it on the floor by his bed and sighed.  Rubbed his face with the backs of his hands.  "That was… nice of you."

Impulsively, Arya sat down next to him on the bed.  Took one of his large, rough hands — still too warm from the fever coursing through his blood — in hers.

His body stiffened immediately but he did not take back his hand.

"I can’t believe it’s really you," Arya said, every single one of the angry, hateful words she’d imagined she might say to him if she ever saw him again forgotten in her relief that he was finally here and awake.  And looking at her as though she’d hung the stars in the sky.

Gendry chuckled a little under his breath and ducked his head.

"It’s really me," he said quietly.  "And it’s really you, too.  Isn’t it."

They sat next to each other the rest of the night, hands clasped together, each vowing to themselves to never again let the other out of their sight for as long as breath remained in their bodies.


	44. At the Airport (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt from anidlebrain: "Gave a running hug to the wrong person at the airport and knocked you to the ground."

“Oh,  _shit!”_

Mortified, Arya Stark quickly jumps up and off the guy she just tackled to the ground by Baggage Carousel #3.  The guy she  _thought_ was her friend Renly — the person she came to the airport to meet in the first place — when she first saw him from across the crowded airport.  But who, as it turns out, is one hundred percent  _not_  Renly.

Arya looks him over a little as he picks himself up off the ground, a slight blush creeping up his cheeks.  He’s pretty big, she realizes as soon as he’s on his feet.  He’s nearly a foot taller than her, and his broad shoulders remind her of that one linebacker Sansa used to date back when they were in college.

But despite his size, he was still no match for her and her running hug.  He must have at least seventy pounds on her but she knocked him to the ground in nothing flat when she threw herself at him.

Arya doesn’t think she’s ever been more embarrassed in her life.

“I’m so sorry,” she manages to squeak out eventually.  He’s looking right at her now, she can feel it, but she can’t bring herself meet his eyes.  “I… um.  I thought you were somebody else.”  She wrings her hands in front of her anxiously, looking at anything and everything but him.  

She has no idea what to do now, or what else to say to this stranger who must think she’s completely crazy.  But to her relief he only laughs   It’s an awkward laugh, and it sounds a little forced, but at least he’s not yelling at her or calling security.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says.  He runs one hand through his messy, jet-black hair.   The movement draws Arya’s eyes to his face.  She quickly takes in his hair, his strong jaw, and his bright blue eyes.  She realizes, with a start, that this guy actually does look a lot like Renly.  Even up close..  “Um… stuff like this happens to me all the time.”

Now it’s Arya’s turn to laugh.  “Liar,” she says, grinning in spite of herself.  “Strange girls do _not_  tackle you at the airport all the time.”

The guy coughs a little into his hand.  “Yeah.  Um.  I guess they don’t,” he admits sheepishly.

After that, an awkward silence stretches out between them like an ocean.  Arya digs her phone out of her purse just for something to do with her hands.  She glances down at the display and bites her lip when she sees the time.

“Looks like Renly’s plane is late,” she says quietly, more to herself than to anyone else.  “Shit.  I probably need to go put more money in the meter…”

“Renly?” the guy asks.  “Did you say Renly?”

Arya puts her phone away and looks up at him.  “Um.  Yeah.  Renly.  He’s… he’s my friend.  The person I thought I was attacking when I attacked you.”

The guy gives her a lopsided grin.  To Arya’s surprise, the amused look he’s giving her makes her stomach do a strange little unfamiliar flip.

“Renly’s my uncle,” the guy tells her, his smile growing.  “People, uh, tell me that we kind of look alike.”

His smile is infectious and it pulls a matching one from her before she realizes it’s happening.  “Yeah.  You could say that.”

“I’m Gendry, by the way,” he says, holding out his hand for her.  “Gendry Waters.”

She takes his hand, which is big and surprisingly warm, and gives it a firm shake.  “Arya Stark.”

“Should we check the monitors to see how late he’s going to be?” Gendry asks.  “If it’s going to be, like, another hour or so, maybe we should… I don’t know.”  He looks down at his feet and stuffs his hands into his pockets.   “If we’re gonna be here a while, maybe we could… get a coffee or something?”

“Yeah,” Arya says, nodding, shocked that Gendry Waters wants anything to do with her at all after what she did to him, but too distracted by his dimples and his pretty smile to care.  “Let me go feed my meter and then let’s go get something to drink.”

* * *

 

Three hours, two cookies, and a venti frappucino later, Renly’s stupid airplane is still delayed.  But with Gendry’s hand covering hers and her head resting gently on his broad shoulder, Arya decides that today’s airport adventure was the best idiotic mistake she’s ever made.


	45. Sharing a bed, Part 1 (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a (very humorously worded) Anonymous tumblr prompt, asking for a drabble where Arya and Gendry share a bed. This one's a bit more NSFW than most of the drabbles I've posted here. ;)

The morning after he and Arya stumbled blearily into the first motel room off the freeway they could afford, Gendry wakes up much earlier than he normally does.  

The weak light streaming into the room through the gaps in the cheap window covering tells him it’s not even seven yet. He glances at the clock on the bedside table.  It reads 6:24 a.m., confirming that it’s way too fucking early for him to be up already.

If this were a normal morning Gendry would just pull his pillow over his head and try to catch another hour or two of sleep.  But there’s absolutely nothing normal about this situation.  His best friend – the girl he’s loved since he was seventeen, if he’s really being honest with himself – is sleeping next to him right now, their feet all tangled up together in the warm blankets.  And he’s reeling.

The first thing he’d said when they discovered this room only had one bed was that he’d borrow some pillows from downstairs and sleep on the floor.  But then they stayed up until three in the morning, sitting next to each other on the lumpy mattress, talking about what Arya’d just done and where they were going to go next.  As they conspired and yawned together, his big hand eventually moved to cover her much smaller one and her head rested lightly on his shoulder.  

The next thing Gendry knew they’d accidentally fallen asleep right next to each other in the the motel’s narrow bed, despite what he’d promised earlier.  He could be wrong – but the way her warm body is pressed up against his right now, her arms around his neck, makes Gendry think Arya didn’t  _really_ mind sharing the bed.  Every synapse in Gendry’s body is alive and firing, and he knows trying to get back to sleep is a totally lost cause.

Carefully, so he doesn’t wake her, Gendry cranes his neck a little and looks down at Arya’s face.  He realizes, suddenly, that he loves watching Arya Stark sleep. She looks so relaxed and peaceful – so different from how she normally looks, all defiant and fiery; and so different from how she looked last night when she showed up unannounced on his doorstep, begging him to help her run away from home.  

Here, in this shitty motel room, her full lips are slightly parted and her long brown hair is fanned out against her pillow, its ends tickling his forearm.  

Gendry doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful than Arya Stark in this moment.

Almost without realizing he’s doing it, he reaches down with his fingertips and gently brushes the side of her cheek.  But then he yanks his hand back a moment later, like he’s been burned, when his touch causes Arya to stir in her sleep.  

She shifts a little, mumbling something he can’t understand and settling even closer to him. In doing so, her leg, already entwined with one of his, unconsciously rubs against his cock.  She leaves her leg there and presses into him, sighing.

Gendry gasps, and all remorse he feels about the part he played in last night’s mischief evaporates.  All he can think about now is that he needs to get out of this bed. And fast. His cock – already half-hard to begin with (because he just woke up with a beautiful girl wrapped around him and he’s twenty years old) – is growing noticeably harder by the second.

But he doesn’t know how to get out of bed without waking Arya. More importantly, without alerting her to the fact that her thigh is now pressed up against his dick.

Gendry quickly decides he’d rather die than have Arya find out that piece of information.  

As he worries about what the hell he’s going to do, Arya rolls over a little in bed.  She sighs into his neck and tightens her hold on him. The feel of her warm breath on his sensitive skin is otherworldly. He shudders involuntarily. And his cock twitches, hard, against both the fabric of his sweatpants and her thigh.

_Oh, fuck._

No more time for waiting.  Gendry tries to displace Arya from his body as gently as he can.

“Wait… what?” Arya asks, sleepily, waking up.  Gendry’s eyes go wide with terror. But a moment later she rolls over onto her side and away from him.

Gendry throws himself out of bed and sprints for the safety of the motel bathroom.  Once there he closes the door quietly behind him. He looks down at his crotch. The front of his sweatpants sticks out from his body cartoonishly.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

With a quiet sigh, he braces himself against the sink with one hand and reaches into the waistband of his sweatpants with the other.

He grasps himself firmly.  The feeling of his hand on his cock is a poor substitute for what he  _really_  wants right now, but it’s familiar and it’s good enough and it’s certainly better than the alternative.  He begins to slowly stroke himself, the way he does when he needs it to be over as quickly as possible, and he groans in spite of himself when he begins to feel that familiar tightening in his balls.  

He tries not to think about how fucking  _good_  it felt to have Arya’s body pressed up against him in the bed, her leg brushing against his cock.  And he fails, utterly, images of her small body naked and straddling him flashing before his eyes as he falls apart in his hand.

As he cleans himself up, his heart pounding in his ears, Gendry tries to figure out how the hell he’s going to survive this road trip with Arya Stark.


	46. Another (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt from anidlebrain: "I think we should have another."

The words slip out before Gendry can stop himself. 

“I think we should have another.” 

Arya’s eyes leave their infant daughter, sleeping in her cradle, and snap to his. Her face is ashen, her eyes ringed with dark circles from too many consecutive nights without sleep.

“What did you say?” she asks. The words are quiet – presumably so as not to wake the babe – but spoken no less incredulously for that. 

And then Arya punches him on the shoulder with a strength that continues to surprise Gendry even after all these years by her side. 

“Ouch,” he says – too loudly – rubbing at the sore spot she left behind.

“Be quiet,” Arya says, though not unkindly. She looks him right in the eye before continuing. Puts her hands on her hips. Shakes her head in disbelief. “Gendry. Lyanna was born less than two moon’s turns ago. You’re even stupider than I thought you were if you think I’m doing this again anytime soon.”

Their daughter fusses in her cradle a moment later, as if to voice her own opinion on the matter. Arya hurries to sooth her, putting a definitive end to the conversation.

Gendry knows he’s a fool for feeling the way he does and that Arya has the right of things. Her pregnancy was difficult. The delivery was dangerous, for both Arya and their daughter. What’s more, neither he nor Arya have gotten more than a handful of consecutive hours of sleep since she arrived.

But Gendry cannot help the way he feels. 

He stands by the door and watches, enraptured, as Arya bring sweet Lyanna to her breast, soothing and cooing and whispering bits of loving nonsense to their daughter, as she’s done seemingly without end since the child’s birth. He takes in the babe’s bright blue eyes and black hair, and his wife’s gentle smile, and his heart soars in his chest.

He is Arya Stark’s husband. A proper knight. And a father now, too. It’s more than he ever dared hope for as a wretch in Flea Bottom. He cannot help that he wants to hold on it all as tightly as he can with both fists, to do it again and again and again, to fill his life and his home with so much love and laughter that even the old gods will look down upon him and smile.

After a long moment of silence, Arya looks up at him again. Gives him a small smile.

“Ask me again in a year,” she proposes.

Gendry thinks it’s a very sound plan indeed.


	47. C is for Cookie (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For crossingwinter, who asked for a drabble involving Arya x Gendry and Cookie Monster (who happens to be my icon on tumblr). This is super, super cracky, you guys -- and very NSFW. ;)

It took a long time for them to get to this point.  For her to get Gendry to finally understand she didn’t give a flying fuck about the age gap, or about the difference in their backgrounds – or about any of the other stupid shit her parents might care about but that she sure doesn’t.

When Arya finally got through to him – two weeks ago, on their second real date; in the back of the theater for  _Jupiter Ascending_ , her hand slowly creeping up his thigh and his arm tightening around her shoulders – it was like a dam broke.  

Ever since then there’s been no turning back for either of them.

Now, in her dorm room, Gendry is sprawled out naked on her bed, groaning in anticipation as his stiff cock juts out cartoonishly from his body.  Arya told him, earlier, that he wasn’t to touch himself.  That that was  _her_  job.  And so his hands fist the sheets on either side of his body as he obeys her command.  

But it doesn’t matter.  Even though he’s not touching himself he just can’t hide how desperately he  _wants_  to be touched right now.  The muscles in his legs are taught as bowstrings, and he worries his bottom lip between his teeth so hard Arya wonders if he’s about to draw blood.  

She smirks at him in spite of herself, enjoying the heady thrill she’s getting from having so much power over him, and kneels down on the floor between his legs.  She wraps one hand around his cock and begins to stroke him – slowly at first, and then more rapidly, as he bucks into her hand and whimpers helplessly.

She’s just about to lean forward – to take his cock into her mouth as far as it will go – when it happens. 

“ _Oh boy oh boy oh boy!”_ Gendry says, his voice low and gravelly.

Arya stops the movement of her hand and stares for a long moment at the boy writhing on her bed.  She’s got younger brothers.  She’s no stranger to kids’ television.  And if the voice Gendry just used in the throes of sexual pleasure  _wasn’t_  a Cookie Monster voice, Arya’s a monkey’s uncle.

“Arya,” Gendry begs breathlessly, a moment later, in his normal voice.  “Please.  Your hand.  Don’t stop, please.”

She shakes her head, more than a little weirded out by what just happened, but decides to keep going anyway.  She’s waited way too long for this guy to let something as silly as a Cookie Monster voice in the middle of sex ruin everything.  She wraps her hand around him again and resumes her gentle ministrations.  He sighs in relief, and she watches his face contort in pleasure, feeling the pleasant warmth between her legs begin to grow and spread throughout her body.  

Emboldened by his reaction she tries again, leaning forward and licking his stiff cock from bottom to top, swirling the head with her tongue before taking it into her mouth.

“ _Oh boy oh boy oh boy!”_ Gendry says, again, hips bucking frantically as Arya begins to suck on him with gentle pressure.  “ _Om nom nom nom, oh boy oh boy oh boy!”_

A moment later he comes apart in her mouth with a cry, the word on his lips sounding a whole lot more like “ _coooooookies!”_  than Arya wished it did.  

* * *

 

 _Well,_  Arya thinks to herself much later – after Gendry had returned the favor, multiple times, his head between her legs and his tongue on her like he’d never be able to get enough –  _at least he doesn’t expect me to make Elmo sounds back to him._

She sighs, and snuggles into his side as he snoozes, her last thought before falling asleep that she’d never ever be able to watch Sesame Street with her brothers again.


	48. Sharing a Bed, Part 2 (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For several Anons who requested a continuation of the Gendrya sharing a bed drabble, and Akosiroxy, who gave me the following tumblr prompt: "Arya x Gendry, 'You've done enough already.'" This is another NSFW one, guys. ;)

When Gendry returns from the hotel bathroom, flushed and more than a little embarrassed, Arya is awake.  She’s leaning against the headboard, a pillow behind her back, staring at her fingernails.

“Hey,” he says.  She looks at him – right  _at_  him, really; like she knows his dirty little secret – and smiles.

“Hey yourself.”  She pats the spot on the bed next to her.  “Come back to bed, Gendry.  It’s still super early.”  She yawns, then, by way of proof.

He wants to go back to bed.  Lord, does he ever want to.  But just the thought of snuggling up with Arya Stark under the covers again, all alone in this dingy hotel room, with no one around to interrupt them or stop them from doing whatever they might want to do, is enough to make him half-hard again.

And he can’t risk her finding out.

“Um,” Gendry says, stupidly, shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to another, willing his body to calm the fuck down.

“Come on,” Arya says, rolling her eyes with impatience.  “I’ll even let you have most of the blanket this time.”

Slowly, as though in a trance, Gendry moves towards the bed, and towards Arya.  He climbs into it and lies down, trying to keep as much distance between their bodies as possible.

But it’s immediately clear that Arya is having none of that.  With an impatient little noise in the back of throat she rolls over to face him.  

She pulls him to her by the collar of her t-shirt.  And before he even knows it’s happening Arya’s soft, pliant lips are on his, brushing over them with a ferocity he’s only ever seen from her in his wildest fantasies.

 _God, yes_ , his body screams.  

But this can’t happen.  Gendry pulls back from her, breathing hard, his hands on her shoulders to create space between them.

“Arya,” he says, closing his eyes.  He shakes his head to try and clear it.  “We can’t… we can’t do this.”

Arya gives a little bark of laughter.

“Why not?” she demands.  “I want this. And you want it too.  I know you do.”  She gives him a wry smile.  “I mean, I felt you.  Against my backside.  Earlier.”  To prove it, she gently touches the front of his sweatpants, running her palm gently over his rapidly growing erection.

“ _Ahhh_ , Arya.  Stop it,” he grits out with difficulty, grabbing her wrist.  With all the strength he possesses he pulls her hand away from him.  “I can’t do this.  Arya – I can’t.  I mean… I mean you’re too young, and I can’t take advantage of you like this…”

Arya smiles at him again.  Leaning forward, she presses a gentle kiss to the sweet juncture of his neck and shoulder, making him shudder.

“You have nothing to worry about, Gendry,” she reassures him, gently, into his sensitized skin. “You don’t need to fight this.  You’ve done enough already, just, you know – by helping me run away like you did, and being here with me now.”  

She pulls back to look at him then, a determined look on her face.

“I can’t see how it’s ‘taking advantage of me’ if I’m the one initiating things.  And if it’s something I’ve wanted for a year now anyway, stupid.”

Without another word she sits up in bed and rips off her t-shirt.  Tossing it to the floor, she slides back into bed next to him and grabs his hands.

“Kiss me?” she asks, with a nervousness that Gendry is quite certain he’s never heard from her before.  Her eyes are big, and grey, and beautiful, and then her breasts are pressing into his open palms and he realizes, in a flash, that he will never be able to deny Arya Stark anything she wants.


	49. Lost your Mind (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt for the incomparable justadram: "Arya x Gendry: Have you lost your damn mind?!" (Side note -- this will be the last drabble I post here for a while, as I'm finally, FINALLY turning my attention back to my horribly neglected WIPs.)

“Have you lost your damn  _mind?!”_ Arya shouted, pounding her fists as hard as she could against the closet’s very solid – and very locked – door.

The only response she got from the living room was sharp peals of laughter from Sansa, Margaery, and the other drunken idiots who’d tricked them into this.

“No!” came her sister’s loud voice.  “I haven’t lost my mind.  It’s your turn, Arya.  And you can’t come out for seven minutes!”   

Margaery said something then, in a much quieter voice.  Arya couldn’t make out most of the words.  But whatever she’d said, it made the party erupt in laughter again, so Arya had a feeling she knew the gist of what was said.

Arya was just about to beat her fists against the door again, and demand they let them out of this  _fucking closet right now_ , when Gendry – her friend; her best friend, actually; the guy she’d had a major crush on for the better part of a year now, and the guy she now happened to be locked in Sansa’s hall closet with – put his large and very warm hand on her shoulder.  

The unexpected contact made her jump.

“Um,” he said when she turned to face him.  It was dark in this closet (which was part of the whole  _point_  of this fucking game, Arya knew), and Arya’s eyesight was pretty bad in the dark.  But she could still see well enough to make out the faint blush that was now rising on his cheeks.

“Ugh, I’m so sorry about this,” Arya said remorsefully, wringing her hands and not meeting his eyes.

And she was sorry.  This whole thing was her fault.  The second she accidentally let slip to Sansa and Margaery that she liked Gendry – that she’d liked him for a couple of months now, actually – she just  _knew_ they were eventually going to try something stupid like this.  

When Loras and Renly suggested they play Seven Minutes in Heaven at tonight’s party she should have made a bee-line straight for the kitchen until everyone had had their fun and the game was over.

But she’d acted too late.  Almost as soon as the suggestion was made, Arya and Gendry were frog-marched to the closet where Sansa kept her coats and other winter things.

And now they were locked in here, and everyone out  _there_  was expecting them to make out.  Despite the very real fact that Gendry had never once made any kind of move on her, or showed any sign at all that he wanted to take their friendship to the next level.  And despite the fact that Arya was way too terrified to make any kind of move on him herself.

Arya wanted the earth to swallow her whole.  She wondered whether, if she hoped for it hard enough, it would happen. 

“Look,” Arya said.  She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.  She could do this.  She could fix this.  “We don’t have to, you know.  Actually  _do_  anything in here.”  She looked over his shoulder at a random spot on the far wall, at the snow boots in the far corner of the tiny room – at anything and everything but Gendry’s face.  “I’m really sorry my idiot sister made you come in here with me.”

At her words, Gendry ran his hands through his black hair and let out a long sigh.  

“Ok,” he said.  Arya chanced a glance at him then.  If anything his blush was even deeper than it was before.  He was chewing on his bottom lip, eyes averted.  His hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of his jeans.  “I mean…. yeah.  Of course.  Let’s not do anything.  That’s… yeah.  That’s fine.”

Was that disappointment she heard in his voice?

Tenatively, Arya reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder.  His eyes snapped to hers, blue and smoldering in the gloom of the closet, unreadable but still as beautiful as they always were.

“I mean… that’s what you want, isn’t it?” Arya asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.  “You don’t actually  _want_  to do anything in here, do you?”

Gendry didn’t say anything by way of response.  He held her gaze and slowly, slowly covered the hand touching his shoulder with his own.  Gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Not unless you want to,” he murmured, his voice husky.

* * *

 

Five-and-a-half minutes later, Arya dimly registered that someone had yanked open the door of their closet.   She vaguely heard the wild applause and catcalls pouring into the tiny room.

But she didn’t have the mental energy to care.

With a groan, she wrapped her arms more tightly around Gendry’s shoulders and pushed him up against the far wall of the closet.  Wasting no time, Gendry deepened the kiss and slammed the closet door shut with his foot.

“I’m so glad they did this to us,” Gendry said, smiling against her lips.


	50. Are you Jealous?  (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a Jon x Sansa tumblr prompt from alice-in-neverneverland: "Wait a minute. Are you jealous?"

Jon can’t pinpoint the exact moment he started noticing Sansa Stark.

It wasn’t the day they first met. No; freshman orientation had been hot and utterly miserable. The only thing he could focus on through the pointless speeches and tours was how desperately he wanted to unload his bags into the dorm he’d be sharing with his new roommate. 

It wasn’t during in sophomore English, either. They sat on opposite sides of the lecture hall in that one. And besides – the class started at 8 a.m. Jon’s hardly even human before ten. (Now that Jon’s a senior he never takes classes before noon if he can help it.) 

What Jon does know, though, is now that they’re taking Intro to Drama together at two in the afternoon in Professor Luwin’s small cramped classroom, Sansa Stark is almost all he can think about.

She’s a natural at acting, Sansa is. Her features light up every scene she’s in, and her long legs and willowy form give her a stage presence that most of the other students in the class – most of whom are only here for the easy A Luwin is famous for, Jon included – lack completely. 

But Sansa isn’t like the others. 

“I know it’s silly, but I’d like to make a go of it after graduation,” she confided in him last night, when they were in his apartment rehearsing lines for today’s class. She sounded almost embarrassed to admit it to him. She’d flushed pink, and her eyes were downcast, like she couldn’t quite look him in the eye. “In New York actually, if I can line up enough auditions.”

Jon had smiled at her and nodded in a way he hoped was encouraging. He wanted to be encouraging to her. In reality, after a semester spent working with her nearly every weekend on lines and scenes and dialogue Jon wanted to be everything to her.

“You should go for it,” he said, hoping he was keeping the nervous tremor he always felt whenever she was close to him out of his voice. “You’re good, Sansa. Really, really good.”

Sansa rolled her eyes at him. Like she didn’t believe he meant it.

“You are,” he insisted. “You know you are.” He shook his head a little. “Wish I were half as good as you are,” he mumbled.

Sansa’s eyes snapped to his. She raised one eyebrow at him before continuing. “Wait a minute, Jon. I thought you were only in this class for the A,” she said, giving him a small smile. She giggled and gave him a playful, teasing tap on the shoulder. “Are you jealous?”

Jon shook his head again. “No,” he said honestly. He closed his eyes and took a calming breath, even as his heart pounded in his ears, trying to remember Sam’s advice to him last night about telling Sansa how he felt. “I wish I were a better actor because then I’d have an excuse to go to New York after graduation too.”


	51. Checking You Out (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt from ourfuriosa: "I saw that. You just checked me out."

Arya made a last-minute adjustment to the braid coiled around her head. Putting her hands on her hips she studied herself in the mirror.

She looked ridiculous. Her hair, makeup, dress – all of it. 

She still couldn’t believe Sansa was doing this to her. But in the end, Sansa was her sister. Today was her wedding day. And she loved her. All of this stuff was important to her so Arya knew she had to just suck it up and deal with it.

Turning around Arya looked up at the guys on the other side of the room, lining up in their tuxes. She caught Gendry’s eyes briefly and nodded, glad that at least her best friend was in this with her.

To her surprise, though, he didn’t return her smile. His eyes grew wide and darted off to the side, a furious blush starting to creep up his cheeks.

What the hell?

“Gendry,” she said, crossing the room to him. “What’s up?”

He still didn’t look at her. “Um,” he said awkwardly. He tugged at his collar like it was choking him (which it very well may have been) and looked over her right shoulder at an invisible spot on the wall behind her. “Nothing.”

Arya raised an eyebrow at him. “Nothing.” Why was he acting so weird?

“Yup. Nothing.”

She decided to drop it. He was always acting weird, and she’d grown almost used to it. Rolling her eyes, Arya walked back to where the other bridesmaids were standing. Sansa wanted the girls to walk into the chapel in order from shortest to tallest, so Arya took her place at the front of the line, in front of Jeyne and Margaery and all the others.

She glanced over at Gendry again – it was force of habit, really. She often found her eyes trailing over in his direction whenever they were in the same room together. She’d been doing it since…. well, since always.

But Gendry wasn’t looking at her. Or, rather, he wasn’t looking at her face. His eyes were roaming unabashedly over her body. Over her neck; her bare shoulders; her small breasts, accentuated like crazy in the push-up bra and tight bodice Sansa had her wearing today. 

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What he was doing. And the strange, lightheaded way it made her feel.

“Hey!” she shouted across the room. Everyone could hear her but she didn’t care. No one was paying attention to her anyway; this was Sansa’s day. “Gendry! I saw that. You just checked me out.”

His eyes snapped to her face, then. He looked guilty, and a little like he wanted the world to swallow him whole – but there was another look there as well as well that Arya had never seen directed at her before, but that filled her stomach with butterflies all the same.

“Maybe I did,” he admitted to his best friend, his voice strange. The left side of his mouth quirked up into a sheepish half smile. “Maybe you look completely gorgeous right now, and I just couldn’t help myself.”


	52. Wet (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Day 3 of 2015's Arya x Gendry Week on tumblr. The prompt was "wet."

When he used to dream about what kissing Arya Stark would be like, during all those days and years spent looking for her, it never went quite like this.

He’d imagine himself dressed in fine clothes when it happened.  He’d be a proper knight; a man finally worthy of her.  She would look up at him through her lashes as he cradled her beautiful face in his hands.  And then he would kiss her – chaste, and careful, and true.   

But Gendry’s dreams seldom match reality.  When he finds Arya again at last, half-frozen and dressed in rags but very, very much alive, kissing her proves to be no exception.  

She runs to him from across the fields of Winterfell when she sees him, both of them drenched to the skin from the cold early Spring rain.  And she launches herself into his arms with such force it nearly knocks him back.

“Found you,” Arya mumbles against his lips through their kisses, her mouth not so much kissing him as  _devouring_  him, body and soul.  And he chokes back a sob, nodding in agreement as his grateful tears wet her cheeks.


	53. Hitchhiking (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a five-sentence fic tumblr prompt: "Arya x Gendry, met while hitchhiking." I would really love to expand on this someday but in the meantime, here's the drabble.

Even as he’s pulling to a stop by the side of the road Gendry isn’t certain exactly what’s making him do it.  As a rule Gendry likes to play things safe, and he knows picking up strange girls in need of rides isn’t something that really falls into that category.

But even from a distance there are a lot of little things about this girl that, when added together, give him pause: the haunted look in her eyes; the determined set of her jaw; all of which stand in very sharp contrast to her diminutive size.  In the end he supposes he just couldn’t look away from her.

“You’re nice,” she tells him once she’s settled in the passenger seat, her meager belongings tossed in the back of the truck like they mean nothing much to her at all.  “It’s been a long time since I’ve met someone who’s nice.”

Gendry tries to ignore the intense look she gives him, and the strange swooping sensation in his stomach at her words, as he pulls the truck away from the side of the road and begins to drive.


	54. Kittens (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Londonrainings for the prompt: "Sansa: Kittens."

Sansa had been having a terrible day.

Spring, though apparently on its way (if the latest from the Citadel’s maesters was to be believed), was taking its sweet time in arriving.  Snow snow still covered the grounds of Winterfell in a thick blanket, making travel to or from Winterfell – or even simply walking the grounds of Winterfell itself – literally impossible for her in her current condition.

And walking was exactly what she wanted to be doing right now.  

From the very beginning, this pregnancy had been nothing like her last one.   With Cat, she had been energetic and happy at first; lethargic and nursing sore ankles by the end.  This time, however, with less than two moons turns left before the babe was due to arrive she was full of what felt like boundless energy.  

Samwell Tarly assured her that all of this – everything she had felt with Cat, and everything she feels now – was well within the spectrum of normal symptoms for a woman with child.  But it didn’t matter.  Some nights it was all Sansa could do to keep from climbing the walls.

She was just about to go and find Jon and cry to him in frustration when Septa Helgane knocked timidly on her chamber door.

“Lady Stark?” she said, cracking her door just enough for her voice to carry through.

Sansa quickly tied her robe around herself (a tricky thing, now, given her swollen belly).  “Yes?”

“I beg your pardon, Lady Stark.  But you are needed in Lord Stark’s solar.  He says it involves a matter of great import to the north.”

Sansa blinked in surprise.  Since falling pregnant the first time, Jon has rarely called upon her for anything involving the running of the north, feeling strongly – as she did –  that her talents would be put to much better use running Winterfell and caring for baby Cat.

“Did Lord Stark say what the matter was?” Sansa asked, dubious.  “Are we in any danger?”

Septa Helgane laughed a little.

“He did say, my lady.  And no, we are in no danger.”  More polite laughter from the other side of the door.  “But I cannot say any more.  Lord Stark wants to show you what’s happened himself.”

* * *

 

Ten minutes later, Sansa found herself in front of her lord husband’s solar, all prior frustration over her inability to exercise her legs properly forgotten in her curiosity to learn what it was Jon wanted to show her.

She knocked tentatively on the door and entered without waiting for an invitation to do so.  To her great surprise, she found her lord husband crouched down on the ground, staring intently into a small cupboard behind his writing desk where he usually stored old documents.

“Jon?” 

At the sound of her voice Jon’s head swiveled so he was facing her.  But he did not rise.  He wore a grin so broad it looked like his face might split in two.

“It appears as though Mittens the cat has beaten you to it,” he said, pointing at Sansa’s burgeoning belly, but still grinning.  “On top of parchment I needed to send off to Kings Landing in the morning no less.  If you’re wondering, she’s delivered a girl, and a boy, and a girl.”  He laughed then, clearly not at all upset that his parchment had in all likelihood been ruined.

They spent the evening taking turns doting on the new mother and her babes, bringing blankets and milk and laughing together as they tried to decide what to name them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I plan to update Encounters by the end of the week come hell or high water. If any of you reading this are still holding out hope on that story I cannot thank you enough for your patience. <3


	55. Unexpected (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet for ourfuriosa on tumblr, based on the following prompt: "There were a lot of things Gendry was prepared for, but this was not one of them."

There were a lot of things Gendry was prepared for, but this was not one of them.

“It’s you,” Arya said, breathlessly, when she finally stopped running, just a few inches of charged space all that separated him now from the girl he’d been searching for for years.

“Um,” he said stupidly – because even in his wildest dreams he never imagined that she’d be the one to find him; much less like this, right here in the middle of the Riverlands with an axe in one hand and his hammer in the other. 

She laughed at him, then, the sound like tinkling bells or the wind through the trees. He wanted to grab her – right there, right then, the Brotherhood be damned – and show her all the ways he missed her while she was gone; but there’d be time for that later.

“It’s me,” he agreed when he finally got his stupid tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth. He smiled at her, unable to believe this wasn’t some kind of fever dream, and she laughed again – so long, and so beautifully – and he was home.


	56. Clothes (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for perfectliesfromaperfectdame on tumblr, who provided the following prompt: "Jon, what the hell are you wearing?"

"Jon, what the hell are you wearing?"

Jon looks down at his outfit – his blazer; his tie; his slacks – and then back up at Sansa, confused.

“Um, clothes…?” he says stupidly, already feeling his cheeks turning pink at the look of amusement on Sansa’s face; though for the life of him he can’t understand what on earth is wrong with this outfit.

Sansa is smiling as she approaches, reaching up and undoing the knot in his tie with a few quick flicks of her wrist.  Her mouth is just a hairsbreadth away from his as she undoes his top few buttons and adjusts his collar, and he has to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep himself from closing the short distance between them and kissing her the way he’s been dreaming about kissing her for months.

“You’re going to Gendry’s bachelor party, Jon – not a job interview,” she explains, as though speaking to a small, dim-witted child. She reaches down to untuck his Oxford from his slacks, and the quick brush of her fingertips against the sensitive skin of his stomach is gone as quickly as it came – but it’s enough to knock the wind out of him all the same.

He’s incapable of speech as she makes quick work of his clothing; but when she eventually backs away and nods appreciatively at her handiwork, he smiles at her, grateful for her help in this and in all things.


	57. The Big Dipper (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Akosiroxy gave me the first line of this drabble as a prompt on tumblr: "Hey look that's the Big Dipper." I wrote the next five.

She giggles, then, and ducks her head as she gently traces the constellation of freckles on Gendry’s chest with the tip of her finger. “Right there is its handle” – she stops talking just long enough to press a soft kiss to the freckle in question – “and here’s the top of the pan.”

Gendry doesn’t know if she’s right or not. He wasn’t in school long enough to study astronomy, or psychology, or any of those other really hard classes ending in y that Arya’s taking at the university.

But it doesn’t matter. She kisses him on what she’s just named his little dipper, and then the North Star, and he knows she’s the only starlight he’ll ever need.


	58. All Grown Up (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lydiamartenism on tumblr gave me the first line of this drabble as a prompt: "Sansa could hardly believe her eyes; there was no way this was Jon Snow." I wrote the next five.

The awkward, quiet boy who used to hang around her brothers and Theon was gone now, apparently replaced by this gorgeous, quiet young man who could wear a tux like she couldn’t believe.

Feeling an unexpected fluttering of butterflies in her stomach, Sansa approached him from across the crowded room. Carefully (because these heels Marg picked out for the bridesmaids were murder, and walking in them without toppling over was easier said then done) but purposefully (because she wouldn’t really believe this guy was Jon Snow until she got a chance to see him up close).

But it was undeniably him, and when he saw her standing less than a foot away from him he smiled shyly at her in recognition, setting off dimples in his cheeks Sansa never noticed when they were kids together. It was a smile that lit up his eyes; his face; the entire room – and when he took her hand and gave it a welcoming squeeze, Sansa couldn’t help but smile back.


	59. No Space (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from anidlebrain: "Things you said with no space between us." 
> 
> This one's NSFW, kids.

None of the bawdy minstrels’ songs he used to overhear in Flea Bottom taverns prepared him for this.

The way she looked, her entire body arched gracefully over him as she moved with delicate but deliberate purpose.  The irresistible slip and pull of their bodies as they came together again and again, inexorably, the friction between them coming to a delicious, indescribable head that made him beg her for  _more_ ,  _harder_ ,  _and faster_ before he even realized the words were leaving his hips. 

“Arya,” he whimpered, moments before the inevitable end, her strong body clenching and unclenching around him in an intoxicating rhythm that had him spooling out, letting go, unraveling helplessly in her arms..

 _They’ll have to write new songs, those minstrels_ , he thought deliriously, after it was over, her small warm body pressed up against his in his long narrow bed.  They’d have to write new songs just for them.


	60. Catching the Train (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "trick or treat!" drabble written for Sunbeamsandmoonrays on tumblr

Sansa’s alarm didn’t go off this morning. 

If she hadn’t run the half mile between her apartment and the train station at full tilt, arms and legs pumping and lungs on fire, she’d have missed the eight o’clock train that brings her to Hyde Park every Wednesday morning.  

But Sansa Stark is nothing if not determined.  Especially on Wednesday mornings.  And so she makes the train, meaning she won’t be late for her weekly meeting with Jon.  

As the train pulls out of the station Sansa looks at her reflection in the train’s window.  She takes in her wind-swept red hair that Jon loves to touch.  She glances at her cheeks, flushed from exertion. 

She smiles at her reflection in spite of herself.

* * *

 

Jon is sitting there, on their bench at the northern edge of Hyde Park, wearing a starched white shirt and those tight jeans she has dreams about.  He looks up expectantly when she sees him.  Waiting for her.  

“Hey,” he says, smiling.  He scoots over a little on the bench to make room for her and pats the spot next to him.  "Sit with me?“   It sounds like a question – like he’s inviting her to join him, as though he doesn’t  _know_  there’s nothing in the world she’d rather do right now than sit next to him and knot her fingers through his.

“All right,” she agrees, nodding, playing along.  She sits next to him on the bench and he immediately takes her delicate hand in his own.  Her hand is cold from being outside in the chill April air for too long with no gloves and he wastes no time, rubbing his large calloused thumb over her palm to warm her up.

Time takes on a strange, ethereal quality on their Wednesday mornings together.  

Her phone tells her that their meetings usually only last an hour — sometimes ninety minutes, if she can get him laughing hard enough to forget about his half-brother and his mother for a moment, and all the responsibilities waiting for him when their Wednesday morning is over.  

But it doesn’t matter what her phone says.  Time with Jon feels at once never-ending and over far too soon.  It leaves her stomach in knots just to think of it.

She doesn’t ask Jon the question that’s been at the front of her mind ever since she met him four months ago at the university library.

She did at first.  Ask him, that is.  Every Wednesday she’d ask if this might be the week she could come home with him — meet his mother, meet his brother.  See his world.

But her questions always shut him down, caused him to close in on herself like a wilting flower.  His reaction to her wanting more than weekly park dates with him hurt her more than she could find words for, back in those early days.   _Does he not feel the same way about me that I do about him?_  she’d ask herself at night, awake in her dorm room and staring at the ceiling.

She knows enough about him, now, to know that’s not it at all.  No matter how much she tries to convince him otherwise — that she loves him precisely  _because_  he is who and what he is — in his mind she’s a rich Senator’s daughter from Evanston, and he’s just a poor kid from the south side of Chicago who works at the U of C library for his scholarship.  

As much as he cares about her — and she believes,  _knows_  now that he does — he’s too ashamed of who he is and where he comes from to let her into his world like that.

And so this morning she doesn’t ask.  ”I’ll wait,” she tells him instead when their ninety minutes is at an end.  ”Forever, if I have to.”  Her voice shakes with the earnestness of her feelings.

Jon puts his phone in his pocket.  He turns to look at her, taking her face in both hands.  Sansa closes her eyes at the gentle touch of his lips to hers.

“Thank you,” he whispers against her lips.  "I think… I think next week I’ll be ready.“  

Her eyes open wide in surprise.  He chuckles a little, the way he does whenever he’s nervous.  He looks away.

“Would that be all right?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.  Still not looking at her.

Sansa takes him into her arms by way of wordless response, her mind reeling with hope and possibilities.


	61. Gargalesthesia (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tumblr prompt from insomniarama: "Gargalesthesia - The sensation caused by tickling."

It took Gendry a long time to fall asleep that night.

What happened, earlier, had taken him completely by surprise.  Arya, in that dress – looking like a proper  _girl,_ not like the dirty little boy he’d been running with for months now… 

Well.  

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting to see standing there when he looked up from his work is all.

Her eyes had lit up when he’d said she looked nice, and she’d smiled at him – even though he’s quite certain she hadn’t really meant to.  In either event, her in that pretty dress with those sparkling eyes and laughing smile was enough for him to completely forget himself and behave like an idiot with a girl whose older brothers could have him gelded with a word if they knew.

He couldn’t allow something like that to happen again.  It didn’t matter how much he enjoyed teasing her, or how happy it made him when she smacked his arm, or that tickling her on the floor of that room was the most fun he’d had in recent memory.

He fell asleep shortly before dawn, the way she’d felt in his arms as they’d thrashed together on the floor, tickling each other and laughing, staying with him into dreams.


	62. Queensguard (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A filthy little drabble written for my darling aliceofalonso, who prompted "Jon x Sansa, Queensguard/Queen AU." I've been toying with the idea of writing a WIP with this premise for aaaaaages now. But for now, I'm just gonna put this little drabble right here. As a placeholder. ;)

His head and his heart were full of honor when he arrived at Winterfell last autumn, fresh from the Wall and greener than summer grass.

But there is no room for honor in this hidden room, her hands on his chest, her mouth hot, urgent, moving against his shoulder.

They can’t make a sound.  This much he knows from the whispered half-warnings Sam gives him when he returns from their Queen’s bedchamber every morning at dawn.  And he knows it from the Queen herself, though she never says the words aloud, from the way she clamps her hands over his mouth to muffle his desperate cries.  

The rest of the Queensguard would assume the worst if they knew.  They’d figure he’d forced himself upon her, upon the much beloved Queen in the North, made her spread his legs for him while he thrust into her again and again, made her his.  

Her family would have him gelded.  Or worse.

That’s not how it happened, of course.  No – the Queen came to _him_  that first time, came right into his small bedchamber, her nightdress left partly open, her beautiful body bared to his eyes.  She’d dropped the nightdress to the floor right in front of him, and she crossed the room in two long strides until they were breathing the same air .  Her hands found him straining for her touch already, and she gripped him there, gently, but with inexorable purpose.

She moved her hand, and with that, the last shreds of his honor were stripped away.

“Please,” she begs him now, her cheeks flushed, the way they are when she’s close.  “I need…”

He knows what she needs.  Knows it like he knows his name.  He pins her arms over her head and fucks her relentlessly, pounding into her again and again until she’s the one crying out, sobbing his name, biting his neck and writhing in agony and ecstasy.

It’s forbidden, all of this.  He knows that.  But as she shatters underneath him, all around him, he also knows he will never be able to refuse his Queen anything she asks.


	63. Reference Librarian (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "ten minute fic" written for riahchan on tumblr, in response to her prompt: "Someone left a comment card in the suggestions box that says “the reference librarian is super cute” and now all of the reference librarians are arguing over who it’s for." If I someday have a lot more free time than I currently do I may expand it. For now, though, I'm just gonna put this right here. ;)

“The reference librarian is super cute.”

It was the last comment card Stannis Baratheon, the head librarian, read at the meeting.  And it was the only one he chose to read out loud.

These all-library meetings were usually horribly boring.  So when Stannis read this comment – his face as red as a ripe tomato by the time he’d finished – Jon had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.  He glanced over at Sam, who looked like he was having a similar reaction.

“The comment’s about me, obviously,” Theon Greyjoy said from somewhere behind him.  That made Robb, his cousin, laugh, and earned Theon a high-five from someone else sitting with them.

“It is not,” Renly said, pretending to be deeply offended.  “ _Obviously_  it’s about _me.”_

The meeting degenerated pretty quickly after that, with librarians and librarian assistants laughing and arguing with each other over who the anonymous commenter had actually been talking about and Stannis, ever the bureaucrat, trying, and failing, to restore order.

As the chaos continued Jon (who had no interest in participating in this ridiculous discussion) let his eyes wander.  They eventually settled on a pretty redheaded girl he’d seen at the reference desk a few times since he started here three weeks ago.  Her eyes met his, and she smiled.  She had a really nice smile, this girl, with a dimple in her right cheek that suited her.

A moment later, to his surprise, the girl looked meaningfully at Stannis (who was still trying to restore order) and then at the comment card he held in his hand.  She started blushing a little, and then turned her gaze directly at Jon.  

She smirked, one eyebrow raised, and nodded.

* * *

 

After the meeting was finally over, Jon – still in a daze from his interaction with the mystery commenter – returned to his desk.  On top of it was another comment card:

_Sansa Stark_

_(512) 555-9382_

_Next time I’ll remember to sign it._


	64. Voyeur (Jon x Sansa -- NSFW)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a "voyeurism" prompt on a LJ Kinkmeme. Very, very NSFW.

Jon's eyes widen involuntarily at the sight of her as she crawls, catlike, up the lordling's prone body, her tongue touching the corner of her smile a half-second before she pounces.  
  
Jon has to stuff his fist in his mouth in a desperate attempt to stay quiet as Sansa gently but purposefully takes the young man into her mouth. She ravishes him, wasting no time, her tongue swirling hot, heavy, and slow around and around the man's tip, her head bobbing up and down in a tortuously slow rhythm so clearly designed to drive Jon mad he can’t bear it.  
  
She hollows out her cheeks -- and then looks up, directly at Jon, through eyes half-lidded with lust and desire and raw, naked power. Because Sansa bloody well knows he's here, she's doing this _because_ he's here, watching her, watching them, from his hidden vantage point within the shadows cast by the heavy chamber door. She knows he can't help himself; that he's drawn to her, drawn to what she does to young men like this one behind her closed door, like a moth to a flame.  
  
When Sansa moans around the man's cock, Jon can feel the reverberations from the sound she makes so clearly it's like he's the one being devoured. He cries out in spite of himself -- he can't help it; he can _never_ help it when Sansa Stark is involved -- all half-hearted attempts at being quiet abandoned. Sansa must have anticipated this misstep because a moment later her moans grow even louder to drown him out, and the sound she makes is so unbearably gorgeous and filthy and brilliant Jon can feel it in the pit of his soul.   
  
The man she's tormenting in her bed must enjoy the sound too, because the hands feverishly gripping the top of Sansa's head suddenly drop down to the bed beneath them, fisting the sheets so roughly his knuckles turn white.  
  
Jon watches her, them, helplessly, completely spellbound, as this young man he's come to hate more than anything he's ever hated in his life disappears into her luscious mouth again, and again, and again. The entire universe is collapsed down to the point of contact, the place where he disappears between her lips over and over. As Sansa deftly brings the young lordling higher, and then higher still, his completion within reach, Jon first palms, and then squeezes himself through the thin fabric of his cloth breeches, desperate for friction and for her touch and for any kind of relief he can find.  
  
Sansa looks up at him again and, smiling around the man's cock, she snakes one hand down her lithe body to the place she never shares with any of these young men. He watches, thunderstruck, as she gently strokes herself. And the last thing he sees before his eyes are forced to close and the whole world goes white is Sansa, her breasts heaving, her entire body writhing with her pleasure.


	65. Shaggy (Arya x Gendry, Rickon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for anidlebrain, who requested A x G "I can't believe you talked me into this." I tweaked the prompt a little because SHAGGYDOG AND RICKON happened on last night's GoT episode and I am in need of happy Starks and happy wolves. There's still A x G here but it's mostly a ficlet about Rickon and Arya.

“Don’t move so fast,” Rickon whines.  Quite a bit too loudly, honestly, given that it’s the middle of the night and this is a stealth operation if ever Arya saw one.  “You’re gonna hurt him!”

Arya shifts the awkward, wriggling bundle in her arms a little and lets out a huff of frustration.  “I’m gonna hurt _you_ ,” she says darkly.  “And Mum’s gonna kill you when she finds out.”

Gendry gently eases shut the door to his truck and hurries over to Arya to relieve her of the bundle.  Its contents – a puppy, the guy at the shelter assured them; though it’s definitely the biggest puppy Arya’s ever seen  – whimpers quietly at the transition.  Gendry bends his head down to the young dog’s ear, murmuring quiet, soothing things Arya can’t make out.  

Her heart melts at the sight of her usually stoic boyfriend acting all domestic and maternal with this dog.  But these warm feelings aren’t quite enough to distract Arya from wanting to throw things at her dumb brother for getting them into this situation in the first place.

“Mum won’t be mad,” Rickon says very quickly.  He sounds confident, but his hands are shaking, and Arya’s not fooled for a second.  He knows he’ll be in for it in the morning.  “Shaggy – that’s what I’m calling him; Shaggydog.  It’s cute isn’t it? Anyway – Shaggy was lost, right?  He needed a home.  Mum won’t make me give him back.  I just know it.”

Gendry moves away from his truck slowly, cradling the dog gently to his chest like he’s something fragile that might break with the slightest wrong move, rather than a thirty-five pound _puppy_ that will, if the people at the shelter are to be believed, eventually grow into a one-hundred-and-fifty pound monster.  

Arya sighs.  “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” she’s says, shaking her head.  There’s no denying the puppy is cute, but their mum never allowed them pets while she was still living at home.  It’s true that their mother’s been more lenient with the younger kids than she was when she and Sansa and Robb were still children but… she just can’t see her mother being okay with this.

She’s about to tell Rickon all this, and suggest they bring Shaggy back to Gendry’s flat so that they can return him to the shelter first thing in the morning –  when Rickon gives her _the look_.  The piteous yet charming yet mournful look that, as the baby of the family, Rickon has perfected and refined over the years to the point where now, at age thirteen, all he has do is flash it briefly and his older siblings all cave like a house of cards.  And the words die in her throat.

She throws up her hands and sighs.

“Come on,” she says, giving up.  “I’ll open your bedroom window while you sneak him inside.”


	66. Knitting (Sansa, Arya)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet for alienor-woods who prompted me aaaages ago, with "Sansa and Arya, knitting."

Things aren’t so different between them, really, now that they’re finally here, finally _home,_ together again at last.

Of course, that’s not to say nothing’s changed. 

Arya wakes screaming most nights, now, her legs tangled up in sweat-soaked bedsheets as she thrashes and cries, unwilling and unable to be calmed until she or Jon climb into her childhood bed with her, whispering soothing bits of nonsense into her ear as they stroke her hair.   

For her own part, even though Winterfell has been home again for nearly a year, Sansa still startles at small, unexpected noises.  The whinnying of the new, unbroken horse Gendry brought from the Riverlands as a peace offering to her sister.  The shrill call of a distant bird, signalling spring.

But the most important thing – the love that bound her sister to her, back when they were both too young and stubborn and stupid to understand that that was what it was – has escaped from the war and the terrible people that tore their family apart entirely unscathed.  For that, Sansa is endlessly grateful.

They sit together every night in Winterfell’s great hall, now, Nymeria at their feet in front of the roaring hearth – Sansa knitting sweaters, grateful for the soft feel of the wool as it slides through her fingers, and Arya in the armchair beside her, smiling.


	67. I almost lost you. (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for riahchan on tumblr, who prompted: "Jon x Sansa: I almost lost you."

After – when the bannermen loyal to House Stark are at last gone home to their beds, and the fires in Winterfell’s Great Hall are mere embers – Jon turns to her at last, brows knit together in confusion.

Sansa returns his look with a broad smile.  Because how _familiar_ he is to her now, her brother, after these months spent together, his passion and his wit and his quiet smouldering rage as easy for her to read as any of her childhood texts ever were.

“You made no claim for yourself,” he says simply, without preamble.  Breaking the silence.  He shakes his head.  “It’s you to whom they should be swearing allegiance, Sansa.  Not me.”  He shakes it again.  “You are the Stark in Winterfell.”

Slowly, slowly – the way she might approach a frightened animal in the woods – Sansa closes the short distance between them.  Presses a gentle kiss to his forehead.  The feel of his cool, smooth skin against her lips reminds her irresistibly of that tender moment they shared earlier, when he beseeched her to never again keep secrets and she gladly promised him.

“No, Jon,” she says quietly.  Her words are little puffs of warm air against his flesh, and she knows she’s not imagining the shudder that goes through him.  “I almost lost you in the battle for Winterfell.  But I didn’t.”  She pulls back, then, and looks him square in the eye.  “You fought for our home – _our_  home – as valiantly and bravely as a hundred men.  There is no one more deserving of the title of Lord Stark than you.”

“But –” he begins, still protesting.  She cuts him off with a gentle press of her finger to his lips.  His eyes slip closed.

“No,” she says again.  More emphatically this time.  “No _but_.  You are, and forever will be, King in the North.  And come what may I will be here, right here, by your side.”


	68. Awkward Family Photos (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written ages ago for riachan on tumblr, who requested a three sentence fic with the prompt: "Awkward family photos, Jon x Sansa."

“Oh God, _no_ ,” Sansa whispers, horrified, trying to tell herself she’s just imagining Jon’s muffled laughter coming from behind her.

But she’s definitely not imagining her kind-of, not-really boyfriend’s laughter; she’s also not imagining that somehow, the Huffington Post’s gotten its hands on that horrifically awkward Stark Family Christmas Photo from 2000, back when her father was running for state senate and she was six months into her first stint with braces (and deep into her nascent Justin Timberlake obsession).

“I’m going to kill Theon Greyjoy,” she mutters under her breath as she slams shut her laptop, knowing it could _only_ have been Theon who did this to her family, and hoping Jon still wants to take her skiing next weekend after seeing her and her family at their worst.


	69. The Agreement (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For insomniarama on tumblr, who prompted: "Things you said with my lips on your neck."

They have an agreement, she and Gendry.

He’s been burned before.  So hasn’t she.  And so when they started fucking on a whim a few months ago, after that stupid tailgating thing Sansa and Margaery dragged her to, she and Gendry agreed to leave feelings out of it completely.

Their agreement isn’t something they talk about.  Not ever.  But the agreement is real, and it’s there, all the same, as much a part of the situation as her mouth on his body or his calloused hands on hers.

But then –

“I love you,” he mumbles against the sensitive skin of her neck one night, in the back of his truck, after they’re finished, her t-shirt and bra lying in a heap on the floor next to his jeans and car keys.  Those three little words are a shot of adrenaline to her heart, shattering everything.  

Arya freezes in his arms, heart pounding in her chest, against _his_  chest, willing her mouth to form words, _any_  words, just to break the silence.  

 _I love you too_ , she thinks as loudly as she can, too terrified to give actual voice to her emotions.


	70. Now Kiss (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tumblr ficlet written for insomniarama, who prompted: "Basorexia - An overwhelming desire to kiss"

He doesn’t see the point to any of this.

He’s hers.  He’s always _been_  hers, ever since they were filthy half-starved children together.  Even when she was lost to him across the narrow sea.

And so it’s confused him from the start, Arya’s insisting they put on fine clothes and do this in front of a heart tree, her family, and their friends.  He cannot understand how the same woman who survived what she did in Braavos, and then later found him, claimed him, and brought him up here from the Riverlands – the very same woman who already warms his bed every night, pretty vows be damned – could not only want all this ceremonial, pointless bullshit but insist upon it.

But when at last his bride appears in the doorway of her ancestral home – one arm slung through Jon Snow’s, a large bouquet of spring daises cradled in the other; a broad smile upon her face – all Gendry’s doubts about what they’re about to do scatter like dust on the wind.

 _Gods, she is incredible_ , he thinks as she takes his large hands in her much smaller ones.   _Let me be worthy of her_.

They exchange the vows the Septon wrote earlier but Gendry cannot hear them.  He stands there, utterly transfixed by her, his eyes focused intently on the shape of her beautiful mouth as she speaks the practiced words to him.  

As the sun sets behind them he waits impatiently for the blessed moment when the talking will stop and the kissing can, at last, begin.


	71. Nightmares (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For an anonymous tumblr prompt.

Nightmares still plague her.  Even now, months after she and Jon retook their home and her birthright.

Some nights she’s back in the Kings Landing of her childhood, forced to watch her father’s beheading again and again in an endless loop.  Other nights she’s Petyr’s plaything once more; a trapped bird with clipped wings, stripped of flight.

If her night terrors ever startle Jon – if her screams or thrashing unsettle him or, worse, awaken terrible memories of his own – he never shows it.

“I’m here,” he tells her quietly and without fail.  Her steadfast, beautiful, devoted Jon, his arms winding around her to ease her gently from her dreams.  “I’ll always be here.”

Sometimes Sansa cannot quite believe he, or any of this, is real.  After everything they’ve been through, and after everything she’s done, how could the Gods possibly allow her such happiness?

But he’s always there in the morning when she wakes, right next to her, eyes serious and kind.  He smiles when he sees her watching him.

In his arms she can almost believe that someday, her nightmares will be gone for good.


	72. It's Just a Dance (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for my beloved aliceofalonso on tumblr as a "trick or treat!" fic. :)

“He’s here,” Margaery murmurs in Sansa’s ear.  

Sansa sets down her drink and swallows hard.  ”Who’s here?” she asks, trying to sound indifferent.  But her voice cracks on the words and she knows Margaery won’t be fooled.

Sure enough, she isn’t.  She rolls her eyes theatrically.  ”Idiot,” she laughs.” ”Keep your eyes on your drink and your voice down.”

These Friday night dances have become the highlight of Marg’s week. Sansa’s too — though she’d never admit it.  After a week tending wounded boys and washing bandages, it’s really quite nice to leave their nurses’ uniforms in their bunks and let their hair down for a few hours.

Normally Sansa is perfectly happy to sit in a corner and nurse her drinks while the other girls and the Air Force men flirt and dance.  But last week she met someone.  

Or, she danced with him once, anyway.  

He told her his name was Captain Jon Snow as he twirled her round the base’s gymnasium.  He was a fighter pilot.  ”I’m from up north,” he’d said.  Captain Snow’s eyes were a beautiful baby blue — the color of the cold winter skies back home; the color of his uniform — and his arms were muscular and firm under her fingertips.  

He was a terrible dancer, Sansa’d noted, as he whirled her around and past the flimsy crepe paper decorations.  He stepped on her toes three times.  But he grinned at her broadly, and he made her laugh, and he listened to her talk about home.  

And sure enough, here he is again.  Sansa catches sight of him in her peripheral vision, walking with determination towards the table she shares with Margaery.  And she sighs.  As handsome as Captain Snow is, she doesn’t need this.  She’d joined the Air Force to help the war effort and to earn money to send home.  Getting involved with this man — even dancing with him again — would only get in the way.

When he arrives at their table she looks up at him.  And he smiles at her, so sweetly it makes her heart ache.  Her stomach is suddenly awash in butterflies in spite of herself.  She looks down at the table, feeling a blush rise on her cheeks.

“Miss Stark,” he says, with quiet confidence.  She glances up at him and notices, for the first time, that he has dimples when he smiles.  "You… well.  You look stunning this evening.“  He cleared his throat.  "You should know — I had to fight my way through a wall of much larger men just to get to you.”

Sansa laughs at that.  She can’t help it.  The very idea of men lining up for her?  Ridiculous.  

And yet the thought of Captain Snow finding her worth fighting for was intoxicating.

“Captain Snow,” she says, her heart hammering in her chest.  "Oh, _stop_.”

“No!” he said.  He holds up his hands in mock offense.  "I’m serious.“

Sansa shakes her head as another involuntary laugh bubbles out of her.

“Right,” she says.  She gives him a playful swat on the arm before she could stop herself.  "Captain Snow — are you _flirting_ with me?”

At her words he starts to blush as well.

“Perhaps,” he admits.  Another smile; shy, this time, all confidence from a moment before gone now.  "Or perhaps this is just my clumsy way of asking you to dance with me again.“


	73. Whatever Arya Wants (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written as a trick or treat drabble for crossingwinter. This will ultimately become part of the next chapter of Encounters which, OMG, I'm actually working on again. ;)

The first time Gendry kisses her – in the garden where he used to play as a child; the very one his fool father built years ago for the woman who would never love him – it takes them both by surprise.

It’s not that he hasn’t _imagined_ kissing Arya Stark.  Because he has.  Countless times.  Images of her face, just inches from his own, swim before his closed eyelids most nights as he chases sleep, alone, in his narrow bed.  The thought of how her mouth might feel pressed up against his as their tongues and lips roam and explore has been enough, all on its own, to bring him to full hardness on more occasions than he is able to accurately count.  

And yet it shocks him, all the same, when the moment is finally here.  Her hands are tangled in his hair and his clutch at her waist before he realizes what is happening, and the quiet little whimpering sounds she makes in the back of her throat are nearly enough to end him on the spot.

 _What happens now_? he wonders, feebly, as she stands on her tiptoes to deepen the kiss.  

But then she delicately traces his bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. And he knows -- he just _knows_ \-- the answer is whatever Arya wants.


	74. Messy Hair (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A three-sentence-ficlet for riahchan, who prompted: "Jon x Sansa, messy hair"

They came downstairs at different times to avoid the stares and giggles their arriving to breakfast together would certainly provoke.

But it didn’t matter; one glance at Jon’s wild, sex-wrecked hair, and then five minutes later at Sansa’s, told Robb and Arya everything they needed to know.

It all went fine at first (or at least, nobody said anything) – but then Jon stupidly pulled a comb from his back pocket and began to work it through his hair, and Arya dissolved in a fit of laughter so loud Sansa about burst into flames on the spot.  

 _Next time_ , she thought ruefully, doing her best to ignore Robb’s teasing, _we should fix our hair_ first _before coming down._


	75. Texts from Last Night (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny fic for aliceofalonso, who prompted me with this ficlet's title. ;)

_OMG, Jon – is my bra still on your floor?!_

\----------

 

As a general rule Sam doesn’t pry into his roommate’s personal life. But Jon is still asleep in his room and his phone is just  _sitting_   _there_  on the kitchen table, buzzing away like mad, as Sam eats his Cheerios.

What choice does he have, really, but to see what's going on?

As he chews his breakfast he stares down at the incredible string of messages from Sansa.  Until now he'd assumed Sansa was just Jon's best friend and study buddy but obviously he was dead wrong about that. 

A smile blooms across his face as he decides, in that instant, that he's going to have a lot of fun giving Jon shit for this once he wakes up.


	76. Cheesy Pickup Lines (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a tiny ficlet prompt on tumblr: "Jon x Sansa, cheesy pickup lines"

“If I told you you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”

Jon, shocked at this ridiculous proposition, took a step back to get a better look at the girl who’d just drunkenly mumbled it into his ear.  

When he saw it was Sansa – the gorgeous redhead with legs for days who sat three rows in front of him in Early English Lit; the girl he’d been infatuated with since the first day of class – he did his best to calm the sudden rise of butterflies in his stomach.

“Sure!  I mean… no?,” he stammered, confused, voice wavering, as he tried to look casual and to marshall up some bravery from the liquid courage he’d downed earlier.  Sansa smirked at his response, like a cat who’d caught the canary – and Jon made a mental note to thank Sam for throwing this party in the first place.


	77. Meet the Family (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a "send me a sentence, I'll write the next five" tumblr prompt from rumaan: "As he entered the room, all the Starks turned to stare at him and he gulped."

“Oh,” Jon said meekly, feeling himself turn crimson.  

He was mortified; confused as to why Sansa’s family was suddenly all _here_ , rather than in Seattle like she said they’d be until next Tuesday; and not a little bit chilly, given that he’d left his shirt upstairs in Sansa’s bedroom when he’d come down to see what was taking her so long.

Fortunately, Sansa – who, thankfully, was fully clothed, and who was sitting on the couch between two very amused-looking younger brothers – immediately came to his rescue.  “Jon… um… spilled wine on his shirt, earlier,” she said very loudly, though her face was going as red as his felt.  

One look at her father’s face told Jon he didn’t buy it for one second.  

As he watched her older brother stifle a laugh into his palm, Jon couldn’t help but wonder if any boyfriend had ever had a worse introduction to the family than this one.


	78. Peppermint Season (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a "send me the first sentence, I'll write the next five" prompt from aliceofalonso: "Peppermint Season is so much better than Pumpkin Season FIGHT ME!"

Without further ado Arya grabbed her drink and stomped off to her table, where Gendry sat wide-eyed, waiting for her.

“I don’t care if she works here,” Arya said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the barista she just yelled at.  “She’s got shitty taste and she shouldn’t be so enthusiastic about making bad drinks for people.”

Having got that off her chest, Arya then changed the subject to him, and to more appropriate topics for a first date – such as what classes were like for him at Winterfell J.C. and whether he liked his major.  But Gendry couldn’t stop thinking of how incredibly impressive she looked when she told off that lady behind the counter, and that he’d never met a girl with such fire.


	79. Summerwine (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for thatgirlnevershutsup on tumblr in response to a "send me the first line of a fic and I'll write the next five" prompt: "No one had ever explained just how strong summerwine could be."

Jon had no first-hand experience with the drink before tonight, either, as it was hardly the sort of thing included in rations on the Wall.  The four glasses he’s drunk therefore take hold of him with a quickness, causing the room to tilt just a bit on its side and his head to swim.

Part of him wishes his first experience with summerwine was not happening _now –_ that he was able to experience everything as it actually was rather than through a veil of inebriation.

But then Sansa, his bride, smiles at him, and he is suddenly alight from within with joy.  She takes his hand in hers, and he decides tonight is unfolding just as it should.


	80. People Sizes (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a "send me the first line of a fic and I'll write the next five" prompt from riahchan: ""When the package said 'medium' I thought it meant people medium."

Gendry looked so adorably and utterly crestfallen, sitting on the sofa holding the ridiculous pink dog sweater in his hands, that Arya couldn’t help but go over to him and kiss him on the spot. 

After she was finished he blinked at her, confused.  “Not that I’m complaining, but what was that for?,” he asked.  “I got you the wrong thing for Christmas.”  

She shrugged.  “I mean, I’ve already got lots of sweaters,” she said.  “But I’ve only got one boyfriend sweet enough to navigate the mall right before Christmas to try and buy me a new one.”


	81. Puppies (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for ricewithfries on tumblr in response to a prompt.

Sansa is doing her afternoon needlework with Septa Mordane and Arya in the drawing room when the men finally return from the godswood.

"They’re back," Septa says.  But the announcement is unnecessary.  The thick late-autumn snow crunches loudly under the men’s boots as they trudge towards Winterfell, and Sansa can easily hear their noisy chatter through the closed windows.

Arya jumps from her seat and runs to the window with excitement, her needlework spilling out of her lap and onto the floor in her haste.  Septa  _tsks_ loudly, telling Arya she needs to be more ladylike in her demeanor and more careful with her things.  

As usual, Sansa’s younger sister ignores the reprimands.

"Sansa!" Arya exclaims. She points out the window.  "They’ve brought puppies back with them!"

"Puppies?" Sansa asks, confused.  She sets her work to the side — carefully; not like Arya — and smooths down the front of her skirts before joining her sister at the window.  "Why would father bring puppies home?"

But Arya’s told it true.  Each one of the returning men carries a furry, wriggling bundle in his arms

"Let’s go have a look," Arya says.  She darts out of the drawing room before Septa has a chance to scold her again.

 

The direwolf pup father gives Sansa that afternoon is the most beautiful animal she has ever seen.

She’s a big pup.  Her coat is mostly gray, but there’s a light smattering of black speckling behind her ears and on her belly.  Her coloring reminds Sansa irresistibly of the fine ash that settles on Winterfell’s snow-covered ground after one of the big winter bonfires she loves so much.

Sansa’s pup also has an incredibly sweet disposition.  While her siblings’ new pets bark and play at fighting with one another, Sansa’s pup sits demurely and looks up at her with her big brown eyes, wanting nothing so much as to be patted and loved.

After an afternoon spent with her Sansa decides to name her Lady.

She thinks the name suits her well.

Much later in the day, as the sun begins to set and as the five Stark siblings walk back to the kennels with their animals, Sansa catches sight of Jon Snow out of the corner of her eye.

Each of the Stark children got a robust, healthy direwolf pup that afternoon.  Jon got a pup as well -- their lord father always makes certain Jon is never left out of things completely -- but Jon’s pup is much less robust than its litter-mates.  It is clearly the litter’s runt; an unhealthy-looking animal with strange, pale eyes and a coat so unnaturally white Sansa half-wonders if it was born from a union between a White Walker and a wolfhound.

Jon doesn’t join the Starks as they kennel their direwolves.  That doesn’t surprise her.  He waits behind, as he usually does when all six of them are together.  Jon perches on the edge of a log as his pup — Ghost; Sansa think he’s named it Ghost — fetches sticks for his new master and waits for treats.

If Jon is unhappy that he only got a pup today because none of the Stark children wanted it – that, in fact, there’d initially been talk of putting the animal down rather than giving it to the bastard of Winterfell -- he doesn’t show it.  On the contrary.  Jon laughs happily as Ghost scampers about in the snow.  He ruffles him good-naturedly behind the ears and talks to him in complete sentences, as though the beast were capable of understanding human speech.

An uncomfortable lump rises in Sansa’s throat as she watches her half-brother play with Ghost, and as he once again accepts his lower status without question and without complaint.  

Sansa wishes she could go to him.  If she could, she would tell him he’s every bit as good and worthy as the rest of them.  She would tell him she only treats him coldly because she simply doesn’t know how else to _be_ around him. 

But Sansa resists these impulses. Her feet stay rooted to the ground.  Talking to Jon Snow like that – saying those sorts of things to him – would do nothing but make everything horribly confused between them and get her into trouble with her lady mother.  

And so before Sansa can do anything foolish she turns away from her stoic, confusing half-brother she wishes she could somehow get to know better.  She kennels Lady, giving her a gentle pat and sincere reassurance that she’ll be there in the morning to play with her again. 

Once Lady is secured Sansa chances a quick glance at Jon again. To her surprise, she finds he’s watching her, too.  But his calm, grey eyes flit away a moment later, making her wonder if perhaps she’s only just imagined the whole thing.

Sansa’s cheeks feel flushed and hot from the cold weather as she follows her siblings into the castle for dinner.  In her mind’s eye Jon is still watching her as she walks away, his gaze on her a tangible thing she can feel as acutely as any physical touch.


	82. Valentine's Dance (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for sunbeamsandmoonrays on tumblr for a follower appreciation event I'm currently doing. :)

If there is a hell, Jon is in its seventh circle.

There’s no doubt about it in his mind.

He stands, alone, along the back wall of Winterfell Middle School’s gym.  The room’s all done up in pink and white crepe-paper decorations.  In keeping with the stupid Valentine’s Day theme, he supposes.  Jon watches the other eighth graders dance awkwardly with each other to terrible pop songs, feeling more self-conscious in his scratchy brown suit than he’s ever felt at any other moment in his life.

“Hey,” a familiar voice says.  He turns towards it and sees Sansa – his best friend for nearly eight years now – looking up at him with a smile.  She has her hair done up in a different way tonight. The ponytail is gone, and instead her hair’s all loose and curly and piled up on top of her head.  She’s wearing these big, dangly earrings and a pink dress that kind of matches the decorations on the walls.  

She reaches out and gently touches his arm.  

“Hey yourself,” he hears himself say.  But it comes out all croaky and strange. He hates the way his voice sounds these days.  If he’s being honest, he kind of hates everything these days.  

“This dance is lame, isn’t it,” she says. He nods, because if that isn’t the understatement of the century he doesn’t know what is.  He turns to look at her again but she’s watching the couples on the dance floor, most of them standing so far apart from each other you could fit a beach ball between them.  

Sansa never usually wears perfume but tonight, for some reason, she is.  It smells like wildflowers.  The lights strung up around the room are mirrored in her eyes, which seem much bluer to him tonight than they ever have before.    

 _Pretty_ , he thinks, feeling dazed.   _Sansa’s… really kind of pretty._

Jon looks away from her and down at the floor.  He wonders, with a small stab of panic, why his heart is suddenly beating so rapidly.

Sansa clears her throat.  “Do you want to… I dunno,” she begins.  She trails off.  Shrugs. “Do you want to… dance?  With me?”

Jon swallows thickly.  “Um.”  He scratches at the back of his neck.  Is he blushing?  It kind of feels like he is.  “Why not?”  He might as well.  It’s not like there’s anything else to do here, and Sansa’s parents won’t be back to pick them up for another hour.  

“Great,” she says, smiling.  She grabs his hand and leads him to the middle of the gym.  She says something else to him as she puts her hands on his shoulders.  But his heart is hammering so loudly he can’t hear it.  


	83. Zipper (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a "send me a sentence of a fic and I'll write the next five" prompt from kingsnovv: "Never before had a woman looked so horrified, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what he'd done."

“What is it?” Jon asked quietly, trying not to panic as he waited for Sansa to explain what the hell was going on.

“Your… zipper, Jon,” she said under her breath, eyes round as saucers and her face the color of a ripe tomato. “It’s  _down;_  you must have forgotten to do yourself up all the way when we snuck back downstairs an hour ago.”

Jon looked down at himself and realized, with horror, that Sansa was telling the truth.  

As he hurried to zip himself up and readjust things, he prayed to any deity who might be listening that none of Sansa’s older brothers had noticed.


	84. Tattoos (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five sentence fic meme on tumblr in response to the following sentence: "You have a tattoo WHERE?!"

" _You have a tattoo WHERE?!"_

Jon winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth, because his wide-eyed reaction to Sansa’s admission was just about as far from the _stay cool, act disinterested_ advice Robb gave him this afternoon as it was possible to get.

But he was on his third rum and coke of the evening, which meant his inhibitions were a bit lower than usual.  Either way, it was too late to do anything about it now.

If Sansa was offended by his reaction she showed no sign of it.  Just the opposite, actually; her smile grew, and her eyes twinkled with amusement as she leaned closer to whisper in his ear.

“I can show you later, if you want,” she murmured, shorting out Jon’s brain completely.


	85. Vegas, Baby (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ridiculous ficlet I wrote more than two years ago that I forgot allllllllll about until jonxsansafanfiction on tumblr reblogged it yesterday and it popped up again in my notifications. It's in response to this prompt: "We met in Vegas one night and woke up the next morning in a honeymoon suite, hungover, naked, and married." I *think* I originally planned to expand this into a full-length fic but that never happened.

When the alarm on her phone goes off automatically at 7:30 in the morning, Sansa rolls over in bed, her head a screaming agony.

Moaning a little, she fumbles around on the nightstand with clumsy hands. She vaguely remembers putting a glass of water there before drunkenly collapsing into bed last night. She decides it would probably be a good idea to drink some of it before doing anything else today.  

Finding the glass after what feels like an eternity, she gingerly sits up and leans against the hotel room’s headboard. She brings the water to her lips and takes several small sips, hoping to avoid upsetting her roiling stomach any further.

This trip had been a terrible idea from the beginning of course. She never should have listened to Arya. Tired of listening to Sansa’s constant moping about her weeks-ago breakup with Joffrey, her sister suggested they drive up to Vegas for an impromptu getaway. ”To take your mind off things,” Arya insisted.

That was at two p.m. yesterday. Eleven hours and God only knows how many drinks later, Sansa somehow managed to make it back to the fancy hotel room Arya insisted they get for the weekend with help from her sister and some guy they’d met at the last bar they visited.

The upside to everything was Sansa successfully avoided thinking about Joffrey for an entire evening. But they have to start for home in a few hours and she isn’t certain she’ll be able to dress herself without falling over.

“I’m never doing that again,” Sansa mutters under her breath. She grabs her short silk bathrobe from the hook on the back of the bedroom door and pulls it on. Tying it around her waist, she yawns and walks into the main room of the hotel suite.

And nearly screams at what she sees when she gets there.

The guy that helped her home last night is sprawled out and sleeping on the beige love seat.  Stark naked.

Shocked, Sansa tries to pull her skimpy bathrobe down a bit to cover herself. She awkwardly tiptoes as quietly as she can to the edge of the sofa, both wanting to wake him up to demand what the fuck he’s doing here — and wanting to get a good luck at this guy before she does.

She quickly decides he’s actually kind of cute. She didn’t think creeps who crash on strangers’ hotel room sofas were supposed to be cute. His hair is dark and curly. He’s not super tall, but he’s broad-shouldered.  He looks like he probably works out. 

Her eyes drift downwards before they snap up back to his face, color flooding her cheeks.  And then suddenly, she’s looking into deep grey eyes that look nearly as bloodshot as hers feel.

“Um,” Sansa says, stupidly. _Ask him what the hell he’s doing here. Tell him to get the hell_ out _of here._

He beats her to it with an explanation.

“Hey, Sansa,” the guy says, rushing to sit up. He brushes his sleep-tousled hair out of his eyes. He glances around himself nervously. Actually, he looks kind of panic-stricken. The sudden realization that he’s done something he shouldn’t have is written all over his face.

“Hey, look, I know this probably seems super weird,” he says very rapidly, sounding terrified, holding up his hands as if to defend himself. ”But you were, like, so drunk last night. I just… wanted to make sure you were ok with everything before I… um… before we…. you know…”

 _What the hell is he talking about?_ Sansa wonders, angrily.

"What the hell are you talking about?” Sansa asks out loud.

The guy’s eyes widen a little, and he chuckles a little. It’s a nervous sound.

“Um.  Well,” he says, looking around him for the pair of boxer shorts draped over the arm of the sofa. He’s blushing now and won’t look her in the eye as he pulls them on. He fidgets with his hands and stares down at his feet. “I don’t remember much about last night,” he admits.  "Hardly anything at all really.“  His grey eyes flit back up to hers, very briefly, before floating back down to the floor again. "But I do kind of remember… well.   _This_.”  

He holds up his left hand and taps the thin silver band resting on his ring finger.  He looks up at her again and smiles a little.  But it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Suddenly it feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room.  Sansa looks with dread down at her own hand and finds a silver band that matches his.

"Oh,” Sansa says, bracing herself against the couch with one hand so she doesn’t fall to the floor.  "Oh my _god…”_

“Sansa —”

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit!” Sansa says, pacing the room.  "What have I done?  What have _we done?_ ”

Where the hell was Arya right now so she could murder her? 

“I swear nothing happened last night,” the guy says. He coughs into his hand. “Aside from…. well.  Aside from the obvious.”  He closes his eyes and buries his head in his hand.  "I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing, where we were, what I was even _saying_  until it was all over.”  

He pauses, then looks at her for a reaction.  When she doesn’t say anything he nods his head once.

“I’ll just get going,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do about fixing this, ok?” He wastes no time getting to his feet. He’s taller than Sansa thought — a good head taller than she is, in fact.  He dresses hurriedly and walks to the front door of her hotel room.

“Wait,” Sansa says on impulse. The guy pauses, then turns to look at her.

“Yeah?”

“Um,” Sansa says. She rubs at the back of her neck nervously. “What’s… um. What’s your name?”

 _God, I’m such an idiot_ , she thinks.

“Oh.” He runs his free hand through his hair and lets out a long breath. “I’m Jon.  Jon Snow.” He holds out his hand, offers to shake hers. “It’s nice to… um. Officially meet you?”


	86. Mouth went dry (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the five sentence fic meme on tumblr: "Jon's mouth went dry, he'd never seen a sight like it."

_Jon’s mouth went dry, he’d never seen a sight like it._

It took him a long moment of silently staring at the small horde of guys standing around the buffet table before he found his voice.

“Are those… _all_  your brothers?” he asked – because while Sansa hinted she had a big family when she invited him to this reunion, she never said her brothers could form their own basketball team.

Sansa bit her lip, clearly trying to stifle a smile, and said, “A couple of them are actually cousins,” she admitted, gentle amusement evident in her tone, “but only half my actual brothers are even here yet.”

“Oh,” Jon said, eyes wide.

She pecked him on the cheek. “They’re going to love you,” she murmured in his ear; and he swallowed, hoping she was right.


	87. Direwolf Puppies (Sansa, Lady, Jon, Ghost, Arya)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this almost a year ago, and am only just now getting around to putting it here. Mostly this is a ficlet about Sansa, the other Starks, and their direwolves, though there's also a bit of Jon x Sansa if you squint.

Sansa is doing her afternoon needlework with Septa Mordane and Arya in the drawing room when the men finally return from the godswood.

"They’re back," Septa says.  But the announcement is unnecessary.  The thick late-autumn snow crunches loudly under the men’s boots as they trudge towards Winterfell, and Sansa can easily hear their noisy chatter through the closed windows.

Arya jumps from her seat and runs to the window with excitement, her needlework spilling out of her lap and onto the floor in her haste.  Septa  _tsks_ loudly, telling Arya she needs to be more ladylike in her demeanor and more careful with her things.  

As usual, Sansa’s younger sister ignores the reprimands.

"Sansa!" Arya exclaims. She points out the window.  "They’ve brought puppies back with them!"

"Puppies?" Sansa asks, confused.  She sets her work to the side — carefully; she will not behave like Arya — and smooths down the front of her skirts before joining her sister at the window.  "Why would father bring puppies home?"

But Arya’s told it true.  Each one of the returning men carries a furry, wriggling bundle in his arms

"Let’s go have a look," Arya says.  She darts out of the drawing room before Septa has a chance to scold her again.

 

* * *

 

 

The direwolf pup father gives Sansa that afternoon is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.

She’s a big pup.  Her coat is mostly gray, but there’s a light smattering of black speckling behind her ears and on her belly.  Her coloring reminds Sansa irresistibly of the fine, drifting ash that settles over Winterfell after those big winter bonfires she loves so much.

Sansa’s pup also has a terribly sweet disposition.  While her siblings’ new pets bark and play at fighting with one another, Sansa’s pup sits demurely and looks up at her with her big brown eyes, wanting nothing so much as to be patted and loved.

After an afternoon spent with her Sansa decides to name her Lady.

She thinks the name suits her well.

 

* * *

 

 

Much later in the day, as the sun begins to set and as the five Stark siblings walk back to the kennels with their animals, Sansa catches sight of Jon Snow out of the corner of her eye.

Each of the Stark children got a robust, healthy direwolf pup that afternoon.  Jon got a pup as well. Their lord father always makes certain Jon is never left out of things completely. But Jon’s pup is… different.  It is clearly the litter’s runt; an unhealthy-looking animal with strange, pale eyes and a coat so unnaturally white Sansa half-wonders if it was born from a union between a White Walker and a wolfhound.

Jon doesn’t join the Starks as they kennel their direwolves.  That doesn’t surprise Sansa.  He waits behind, as he usually does when all six of them are together.  Jon perches on the edge of a log as his pup — Ghost; Sansa think he’s named it Ghost — fetches sticks for his new master and waits for treats.

If Jon is unhappy that he only got a pup today because none of the Stark children wanted it – that, in fact, there’d initially been talk of putting the animal down rather than giving it to the bastard of Winterfell -- he doesn’t show it.  On the contrary.  Jon laughs happily as Ghost scampers about in the snow.  He ruffles him good-naturedly behind the ears and talks to him in complete sentences, as though the beast were capable of understanding human speech.

An uncomfortable lump rises in Sansa’s throat as she watches her half-brother play with Ghost, and as he once again accepts his lower status without question and without complaint.  

Sansa wishes she could go to him.  If she could, she would tell him he’s every bit as good and worthy as the rest of them.  She would tell him she only treats him coldly because she simply doesn’t know how else to _be_ around him. 

But Sansa resists these impulses. Her feet stay rooted to the ground.  Talking to Jon Snow like that – saying those sorts of things to him – would do nothing but make everything horribly confused between them and get her into trouble with her lady mother.  

And so before Sansa can do anything foolish she turns away from her stoic, confusing half-brother she wishes she could somehow know better.  She kennels Lady, giving her a gentle pat and sincere reassurances that she’ll be there in the morning to play with her again. 

Once Lady is secured in her new pen Sansa chances a quick glance at Jon again. To her surprise, she finds he’s watching her, too.  But his calm, grey eyes flit away a moment later, making her wonder if perhaps she only just imagined the whole thing.

Sansa’s cheeks feel flushed and hot from the cold weather as she follows her siblings into the castle for dinner.

In her mind’s eye Jon is still watching her as she walks away, his gaze on her a tangible thing she feels as acutely as any physical touch.


	88. The Queensguard (Jon x Sansa -- Rated M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this ages ago as a tumblr ficlet. I'd intended to expand on it eventually but at this point I'm pretty sure that'll never happen. So I'm putting it here just so it doesn't get lost. :)

Jon’s head and his heart were full of honor when he arrived at Winterfell, fresh from the Wall and green as summer grass.

But there is no room for honor here, with the queen’s delicate hands splayed like an alabaster fan across his chest and her mouth hot and urgent against his shoulder.

They must be quiet. This much Jon knows from the whispered warnings Sam gives him whenever he catches him creeping from their queen’s bedchamber at dawn. And he knows it from Queen Sansa herself, though she never says it aloud, from the way she always clamps her hands tightly over her mouth to muffle her cries.  

The other knights in Sansa’s Queensguard would assume the worst of him if they found out. They’d think he was forcing himself upon her, upon their much beloved Queen in the North. They’d figure he made her spread his legs for him while he thrust into her. Defiling her as he made her his.  

Her family – the proud, powerful Starks of Winterfell; the rulers of the North for thousands of years – would probably have him gelded, or worse, if they were to discover what they do to one another behind her closed bedchamber doors.

But he has never once forced himself upon the queen.

Quite the opposite.

Sansa came to  _him_  that first time, right into his small bedchamber at the very back of the castle, on what had been his third night at Winterfell.

The ties of her thin nightdress had been half-undone, her beautiful body half bared to his eyes. When she saw him staring at her she dropped her nightdress to the floor, and crossed the room until they were breathing the same air.  

“Jon,” she’d murmured against his lips.

Her hands had found him already straining for her touch. Wordlessly, and without warning, Sansa reached out to stroke him with a gentle hand. 

He’d sucked in a ragged breath at the feel of her small, warm hand wrapped around him – and with that, the last vestiges of Jon’s honor were torn to shreds.

“Please,” the queen begs him now. Her cheeks are flushed, the way they always are when she’s close to the edge. She’s astride him on her luxurious featherbed, her head thrown back and her eyes squeezed tightly shut against her mounting pleasure. “Jon. I need…”

He knows what she needs. By now, he knows her needs like he knows his own name. Jon flips them so that she’s on her back beneath him and wraps her legs round his waist. He pins both of her arms over her head with one hand, and presses one last bruising kiss to her mouth before pounding into her again, and again.

It isn’t much longer until Sansa cries out, keening his name against his neck and writhing beneath him.

It’s forbidden, all of this.  Jon knows that.  But as she shatters underneath him, she drags him down with her -- and he knows he will never be able to refuse his queen anything she asks.


	89. You wouldn't have believed it. (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five sentence prompt on tumblr.

_“You wouldn’t have believed it.”_

Arya sets down the damp cloth she’s been using to wash the traveling grime off his arms and legs and looks up at him, meeting his amused gaze.

“I wouldn’t have believed what? How well you fought, north of the Wall?” She tries to sound casual, intrigued – as though they haven’t already had this exact conversation three times since he returned to Winterfell and burst, unexpectedly, back into her life.

“Aye,” Gendry confirms, nodding vigorously, smile growing; but even that small movement is too much for him, and he winces, all the humor leaving his eyes at once, as the stitches holding his wounds together pull too-tightly against his flesh.

Arya puts her small hand over his and keeps it there until at last, all the tension in his clenched fist leaves his fingers.

“One day I’ll see you fight in person,” she whispers into his ear, promising him. She resumes the gentle stroking motions with the cloth in her hand, and a strange knot of pleasure begins to unfurl in the pit of her stomach as she watches his eyes flutter closed. “But if you  _do_  fight well, Gendry, it’ll be no surprise to me.”


	90. I can't believe you did this. (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five sentence fic prompt on tumblr.

“ _I can’t believe you did this.”_

They are not the words Jon imagined he might say to Sansa when he finally saw her again after being apart for so long; but they’re the first to tumble from his lips all the same when he sees her standing there in her solar, her nightdress tied tightly around her middle, Arya’s dagger in her hands and Littlefinger lying lifeless on the ground before her at her feet.

If Sansa is taken aback by Jon’s bluntness she shows no sign of it; she only sets the knife down on her desk, as gently as though it were wrought from porcelain, rather than steel.

“It could not be helped,” she says, her eyes steely, determined as they bore into his. All at once a feeling of devotion to this bold, brave girl – to his Sansa; a woman who has the courage to do what needs to be done, always, even when others do not – rises up in Jon, and it is a sensation so fierce, so overpowering it threatens to overtake him.  

He stumbles back a step until the backs of his knees hit the edge of her chair and he sits, closing his eyes a moment to gather his wits.

“You need to help me dispose of him, Jon. Please?” 

He will do it, he knows he will do it, just as he knows he will always do anything she asks of him. 


	91. Beautiful (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for an anonymous five-sentence-fic prompt on tumblr: "I think you're beautiful."

_“I think you’re beautiful.”_

Whatever Arya thought Gendry had been about to say – her head resting lightly on his bare chest, their clothes lying crumpled on the floor of Winterfell’s forge – it wasn’t this.

Still half-drunk with sleep, and with a warm, languid feeling throughout her body she could not describe if she tried, Arya shrugs out of his arms and peers down at him.

“What did you say?” she asks, not certain she heard him properly. Gendry is stupid and stubborn and  _hers,_ and though she’s imagined this reunion more times over the years than she would ever admit to anyone, she never thought  Gendry might, the first time they shared a bed, tell her something as soft as this.

As though he can read her unspoken thoughts Gendry smirks up at her, blue eyes sparkling like starlight. 

“You heard me. And… it’s the truth,” he says, almost shyly, as he gently runs one calloused palm along the side of her face. She shivers in spite of herself, leaning into his touch.  “I plan to tell you truths like these as often as you’ll let me to make up for lost time.”


	92. Why? (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five-sentence-fic prompt on tumblr: "Why did you do it, Jon?"

_“Why did you do it, Jon?”_

Jon turns, slowly, until at last he’s facing her, the look on his face so intense and so reverent it makes her chest ache.

“You know why,” is all he says; and before she can protest and tell him that no, she doesn’t know why he’s put her in charge of the North while he’s away, not really, he’s striding across the room until he’s beside her, his lips less than a hairsbreadth away from hers as he holds her gaze.

He does not kiss her; will probably  _never_  kiss her, she thinks ruefully. Jon simply lifts one hand and gently, tentatively, pushes a lock of hair away from her face and behind her ear, making her shiver.

“You’re the only one I can trust, Sansa,” he murmurs, the look on his face and the strange fluttering of her heart making her wonder if perhaps he’s just answered an altogether different question than the one she’d asked.


	93. The Evils of Fossil Fuels (Arya x Gendry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five-sentence-fic prompt from riahchan: "You don't have to tell me twice."

“ _You don’t have to tell me twice.”_

 

Arya stared at the guy standing in front of her booth at the farmer’s market as he folded up the flyer she’d just handed him and shoved it awkwardly into his back pocket.

“Really?” she said, more than a little surprised. Because this guy – with his too-long dark hair that kept falling into his eyes and his stupid leather jacket – didn’t seem the type to go to protest rallies.

He flashed her a weird, almost bashful-looking sort of smile before looking away again – and then suddenly, Arya knew where knew him from: the back row of Intro to English Lit. He was usually sitting in the very back row with his head propped in his hands, trying – and often failing– to stay awake during their prof’s terrible lectures.

“Really,” he said, looking right at her now, his voice and his blue eyes so earnest it caused Arya’s heart to unexpectedly skip a beat. He shrugged. “I really… really hate our dependency on… um. Fossil fuels.”


	94. Scoot Over (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a five-sentence-fic prompt from Snacky: "It makes it really hard to scoot over."

_It makes it really hard to scoot over.”_

 

Jon looks down at their touching thighs and swallows nervously.

“You… um. You have a point,” he says, hoping his voice isn’t shaking too badly.

And she  _does_  have a point, because technically, it’s true: Sansa’s Scarlet O’Hara costume is a massive thing, and takes up most of the small sofa they’re sitting on.

All the same, he suspects the size of her dress has little to do with why one of her hands rests gently on his upper thigh or why her head – piled high with curls and ringlets and ridiculous bows – is currently resting on his shoulder.

At some point Theon shouts for everyone to join him in the kitchen for jello shots, but Jon decides he’d rather stay right where he is.


	95. Dance With Me? (Jon x Sansa)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a repost of something I'd originally intended to have be a short multi-chapter but which now looks like will have to stay as a little ficlet for a while longer.

“Jon,” Sansa says, walking up to his table at the back of the hall and giving him a shy smile. “Dance with me?”

Jon’s eyes go wide with surprise.

He isn’t sure why she’s asking him. He wonders if perhaps the three glasses of white wine she’s had tonight, painted as a beautiful rosy flush on her cheeks, are making her less inhibited around him than she usually is. Or if, rather, her ex-boyfriend’s presence at this wedding has something to do with it.  

Or perhaps Sansa’s just feeling as lonely as he is tonight. He supposes no one’s completely immune to the melancholy that goes with being dateless at an old friend’s wedding on Christmas Eve. Not even Sansa Stark.

But it doesn’t matter. Sansa is asking him to  _dance_ , her long auburn hair gloriously tussled and her honey-colored bridesmaid dress clinging to her body like something from a fever dream.

Whatever her reasons might be for approaching him tonight Jon doesn’t have it in him to refuse her.

“Sure,” he says, shrugging. He tries to look casual but suspects he doesn’t quite pull it off.

Sansa grabs his hand a moment later and tugs him onto the dance floor, laughing as they weave their way around half-drunk couples swaying to a cheesy song Jon can’t quite place.  It’s one of those ballads you really only ever hear played at proms and weddings. He’s never felt the need to learn its name.

“Okay,” she says when they arrive at a relatively deserted spot near the back of the room. It’s dark here, with most of the hall’s dim lighting trained elsewhere. It only makes Jon more anxious.

And then Sansa giggles (since when does Sansa  _giggle?_ ), tottering just a little on her heels before correcting her balance.  

Jon swallows thickly and wills his heart rate to slow as he places one hand at the small of her back and the other, gently, on her left shoulder.

She wraps her arms around his neck; and then, just like that, they’re dancing.

Jon has lost count of just how many times over the years he’s imagined holding her in his arms, just like this. Has it been hundreds of times? Thousands? None of his daydreams compare to the reality, though – of what it’s like to actually hold her close as they dance together, her bright blue eyes looking directly into his. Jon can feel the heat of her body against his palms through the thin fabric of her dress, and her breath feels heavenly against his cheek when she rests her head on his shoulder.

“It’s nice to see you again,” she tells him quietly, and kisses his cheek.

The song they’re dancing to may be terrible –  _is_  terrible, in fact.  But Sansa tightens her hold around him at the crescendo, and Jon hopes it will never end.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to come say hello to me on tumblr I'm there as jeeno2. :)


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